From a young age this Strong Manchester Woman felt that she wasn’t accepted into society. She grew tired of the narrative that went along her identity as a South Asian, Muslim woman. To put it simply, she wasn’t having it. So she decided to fight back and write her own narrative, by becoming a performance poet and producer.

In this episode, your host Vic Elizabeth Turnbull speaks to Nasima Begum. When she’s not being a badass poet, Nasima works in youth development – with a focus on building the confidence and resilience of young  Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and Refugee girls.

In early 2019 she was awarded a prestigious Jerwood Creative Fellowship to make new work for that year’s Manchester International Festival.

In this episode Nasima talks  about,

• Pushing back against stereotypes 
• Being a cat mum
• What really spurred her to become a performance poet
• Learning the hard way about the importance of looking after yourself
• Battling with self-doubt and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable
• Life after loss
• Being the most unorganised woman in the world
• How she’s #NotHavingIt and standing up for herself

Links and information

• Nasima’s on twitter
  
• This is the Bangleshi Women’s Organisation where Nasima works
  
• There’s more info about her involvement with Manchester International Festival here
  
• Nasima’s a board member for Young Identity, a spoken word collective for young people in Manchester

Next Episode
2nd October 2019

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Strong Manchester Women 
The podcast is inspired by the annual Strong Women campaign. The 14 women profiled in this series were selected for the 2019 campaign. For more information about the women visit The Pankhurst Trust’s website

Credits
Produced by us guys, aka MIC Media |@MICmediauk

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