Young people deserve to see their experiences reflected — and to feel they belong in every space they step into.

Through our support, Purple Moon Drama brought Essentially Black to students at New City College, Tower Hamlets, opening up honest conversations about identity, access, and what it means to navigate elite education as a Black or mixed-race student.

Originally supported through our Connecting People and Places Fund: Collaborative Commissions 2022, co-funded by the City of London Corporation, this work shows what happens when creativity meets real lived experience: young people engage, reflect, and speak up.

Purple Moon Drama CIC is a youth arts organisation with a special focus on creating access into the creative industry for young people from traditionally marginalised backgrounds.

As Tanya Blake, Sports and Enrichment Coordinator, shares that the impact went beyond the performance. The play and workshop created space for students and educators to explore representation, challenge perspectives, and recognise the vital role the arts play in young people’s lives.

Programmes like this are about more than creativity. They’re about confidence, connection, and opening doors to futures young people can see themselves in.

About the play

Essentially Black is a new play from Naomi Denny which follows Jess and Lydia, two students struggling to survive in a system not created for them. What happens when race and elite universities collide?

2016. The Rhodes Must Fall movement has come to Oxford University, and students Jess and Lydia are at the heart of it. Neither are white, and surviving at an elite University whilst Black is no easy task. Jess is leading a campaign to get a statue of Cecil Rhodes removed from campus. Lydia is trying to challenge and decolonise the curriculum they are taught. Their mission is to get their university to be as inclusive and accepting as possible – so why does it feel like they’re fighting on their own?

Adapted for a younger audience from the sell-out show at Soho Theatre, Essentially Black looks at what happens when race and elite universities collide and asks who truly has the right to protest in a time when representation and authenticity are being called into question.

“Laugh out loud moments whilst dealing with a difficult and important story” – 4 Stars from Dress Circle Reviews

“Timely and Gripping” – 4 Stars, Water Rats Reviews

“Thoughtful and Comical in Equal Measures” – 4 Stars, Water Rats Review

“All actors work well to power the story forward” – 4 Stars, Water Rats Review

Purple Moon’s Essentially Black was supported through Collaborative Commissions, part of our Foundations Programme, a four-year partnership with the City of London Corporation.

Photo & video: Chris Baker

Part 1

Transcript: Good afternoon. My name is Tanya Blake. I’m the sports and enrichment coordinator at New City College. I work at Tower Hamlets campus, so we brought in Purple Moon for Black History Month. They had an amazing play. It was called ‘Essentially Black’, so they came in twice this year and hopefully it’s the beginning of a great relationship with them.

For Black History Month, it’s relevant, even though we’re trying to get away from just doing Black things during Black History Month, it’s relevant all the time. But we brought them in because it was something different. And these conversations that we need to have, and we just thought it would be perfect for our students. And the play was about the students at Oxford University wanting to bring down the statue of Cecil Rhodes.

Part 2

Transcript: Yeah, it’s super important. Some of our other sites have performing arts centres. We don’t unfortunately. So just to say that a drama is coming, it’s a performance. Everyone’s just excited about that because it’s something completely different.

And it was young actors, it was a diverse cast. The students could relate to them and especially with our community, a lot of students feel quite pressured to go into finance and law and those sort of avenues. So it inspires them to see that this is another option.

Yeah, I do, because it is raising awareness about a really important subject because they’re doing it in a creative way. So it’s not just a PowerPoint presentation, it’s not just a discussion we’re seeing like a real situation being played out, but through a play. And so for a lot of people who can’t articulate what they’re going through, the play spoke to them and then other students said that they learned a lot like they had no idea of about kind of racial issues and how you should say things and how you shouldn’t.

So that makes an impact, which impacts everyone on a wider level. And then some students felt very empowered to like, they wanted to speak at the end. They wanted to give a statement. So it all has a very positive knock-on effect.

Part 3

Transcript: Yeah, and we’ve done work with BlackLivesMatter this year, and I think some students are very forthcoming with information. Some students are still very reluctant. They don’t know if they’re even allowed to have these conversations. So the play just kind of opened that door for a lot of people and again, it spoke for a lot of people.

So it wasn’t just students sitting, watching a performance, afterwards they had a workshop, which was very interactive and students got to give a lot of feedback and to tell about. They got to have the opportunity to say how they would address certain issues or how they could have done things differently.

So yeah, students definitely were given a voice through this performance.

Part 4

Transcript: Of course, it wasn’t just the students that benefited, it was the staff who were watching as well that benefited. So personally. I think that performance should be for all of our staff because many of us are trying to have these conversations and there’s only so much you can say and so much you can do.

So that would that would help so many people just to understand and again, raise awareness and start important conversations.

Part 5

Transcript: I think art and creativity are everything to all people.

So just earlier I was talking to a young student who was going through very, very serious problems, of which I cannot talk about obviously. And I said to them, I said, but, you know, you’re still a person of worth. You’ve still got goals. What is it you want to do? And she said, I want to be an artist and her face just lit up.

And I said, Well, does art help you do drawings and stuff? And she said, yes. And so she’s using art to help her cope with life and to express herself, and that’s her goal.

And in art, you can be different. You can all the things, negative things people say about you can be positive when it comes to creativity because you’ve got so much to draw on.

So she said, Oh, they keep telling me I’m sensitive. And I said, But being sensitive is great. Being sensitive is what’s helping you be creative.

To learn more about Purple Moon Drama and its project, check out the Essentially Black project page on our website.