Social Justice

Hannah loves to link her music with social justice and is involved with a number of projects, mainly in Manchester, UK.

Hannah is currently working 10 hours a week to help facilitate the setting up of a drugs / alcohol rehabilitation center in Manchester for the charity ‘Betel‘. She will be selling her album, giving a percentage towards Betel and is currently looking towards working with other such charities that are changing people’s  lives for the good

Hannah is part of ‘The Project’ in Manchester. As part of this, you’ll find her at the monthly event ‘The Sanctuary’ where she plays and serves food to the people who are homeless in Manchester. This is hosted by Mustard Tree Charity. Also with a team of two other singer/songwriter Hannah’s (!) Hannah is part of running ‘The Social’ – a social justice clubnight in Manchester’s Arts Quarter ‘the Northern Quarter’. ‘We put on a meal and invite up to 30 local ‘creatives’  including singer/songwriters, graphic designers, graphic designers, artists, photographers, short-film makers and actors. We take one social justice issue such as ‘Assylum, homelessness, corporate accountability etc and invite a representative of a local charity to come with someone who they work with, who has suffered injustice. They give a short talk about the issue and we ask the question ‘if you could say one thing to the general public about the issue, what would it be?’ We then ‘create’ around the subject – and present it as a ‘non-guilt’ creative advocacy club-night. We have done 3 in Manchester and one in London and will continue to hold these as often as we can.

Hannah is trustee of Project Caleb and Rhema Theatre Company.

Hannah works with Boaz Trust to host destitute assylum seekers at their home. ‘We rent a couple of our rooms out to lodgers and having found out about the work of Boaz, we really wanted to become hosts, but couldn’t afford to rent a room out for free. So a group of friends who wanted to support the cause but can’t host, put money together each month and together we house a destitute assylum seeker.’ It’s an amazing opportunity to make such a massive difference to someone’s life… the guy we have at the moment had previously slept on a park bench for 4 months’

Greater Manchester Music Action Zone – ‘GMMAZ‘ is a Creative Music Education Company that delivers music making projects for children and young people throughout Greater Manchester.  Hannah works with GMMAZ as a music leader and a mentor for budding musicians.

Manchester-Mexico Project

http://www.mexicomanchester.co.uk/

I have really enjoyed linking arts and social justice over the last few years – and this project is another way of doing this.  We will be taking 20 creatives from Manchester to go and serve the Armonia charity in their work with some of the poorest communities in the world.

Whilst out in Mexico, we will be working along-side the community groups to produce arts and music.  We will have the opportunity to perform with the local communities at some key venues which will help the charity to gain more respect and trust from their local governing authorities. Which will in turn, help towards their long-term partnerships.

Some of the stories of the children the Armonia project has helped from help-less poverty through scholarships to university is incredible! You can find some of these on http://armonia01.giving.officelive.com/armoniamexico.aspx

The leaders of Armonia; Saul and Pilar Cruz are very respected phychologists who mix theology with their phychological expertees and their Christian values to serve the the poor.  I am very excited that I will be able to work along-side them and learn as much as possible about how they work; empowering the poor through the creative arts and education.  I really believe that this will be invaluable learning which I can use for my dreams to do the same – both now, here in Manchester and in other nations in the future.

If you would like to help me raise money for this trip and to take equipment out there, you can sponsor me for my song-a-thon!