George the Poet: can stories change the world?
Beyond Today
BBC
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2018
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
George Mpanga is a poet, podcaster, and one time rapper with plenty to say about the big news stories of our time from Grenfell to the migrant crisis. He came to the Beyond Today studio to tell us about his journey from a North West London estate to Cambridge University – and beyond. He tells us how the power of stories can bridge the gaps between those two worlds.
Producers: Jaja Muhammad and Philly Beaumont Editor: John Shields
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.6 | Hello, I'm Matthew Price and this is Beyond Today. |
| 0:09.8 | Every weekday we tackle one question about one story. |
| 0:13.4 | Today George the Poet, can stories change the world? |
| 0:25.0 | What do I call you? George, the poet? George is fine. I'll call you George then. |
| 0:37.0 | Yeah man, I mean for the benefit of the audience, one intro should suffice. |
| 0:41.0 | So you know we keep saying we're trying to do the news |
| 0:43.4 | a bit differently. That's why on Fridays we've spoken to a few people who probably |
| 0:47.8 | aren't your typical journalists to get their thoughts on what news is, how to |
| 0:51.8 | tell people things, how to change things |
| 0:53.7 | Stacy Dooley Uber Butler and today well it's a poet called George you might have |
| 1:00.1 | heard him doing the oh-2 ad you know the breathe it all in and he was once the |
| 1:04.8 | next big thing in the urban music scene and now he has a podcast which is just |
| 1:10.2 | the best thing going which is why I was a bit nervous about meeting him because I love what he does the way he tells us things the way he challenges us and all our preconceived notions. |
| 1:20.4 | He's got loads of ideas about the future about how we might make this a better place to live for everyone, |
| 1:27.0 | but we started off talking about where he came from. I grew up in St Raphael's Estate in Northwest London. |
| 1:38.0 | St Raffes is an isolated estate, |
| 1:41.0 | a state geographically. There are two ways in, there's one way out. It is bordered by the |
| 1:49.4 | north circular, I think to the west. Busy Road. |
| 1:53.0 | Yeah, very busy road. |
| 1:54.0 | And an industrial estate to the north. |
| 1:58.0 | So it is like a world within itself. |
... |
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