He may be only 22 but Kwame Boateng knows how to make an impression. Last weekend the aspiring human rights lawyer released a short film, 14.06.17, that he made with friends in advance of the first anniversary of the fire that engulfed Grenfell Tower in west London in June 2017, killing 71 people and leaving scores more traumatised and without a home.
Boateng says he was moved to make the film because there needs to be “a continued dialogue” about the disaster. “I don’t want people to ever forget what happened there. Because if we forget it will happen again,” says the Londoner, who is studying for a master’s degree in human rights at the London School of Economics. He says he was inspired to produce the film, with narration written and performed by his friend Luis Meneses, after witnessing the dignity of the people directly affected, and the subsequent fight for justice.
“I saw people standing together, praying together, holding each other, crying with each other, but still standing,” he says. “The messages of hope on the wall, that for me was the thing that stood out. That was what struck a chord with me.”
The film, which partially re-enacts a crime scene investigation at the site of the fire, is part of a broader initiative Boateng began working on just over two years ago. Project Five Fifths (PFF) was named in reference to the 1787 United States constitutional convention where an agreement was signed designating slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of counting the populations of individual states. “I’ve taken that concept and I’ve said that people who are distant from the rest of us in society today are also seen as less than human and are therefore afforded fewer rights,” says Boateng.
The project attempts to carve out inclusive spaces for marginalised voices and for their stories to be heard, including those of homeless people, prisoners, refugees and asylum seekers. Its website explains: “Project Five Fifths has set out to use creativity to help people engage with the lives of people they typically don’t engage with. It has been and will always be for the service of people who are assigned a lower value in society.”
The site hosts blogs and video and is a hub for a podcast collaboration with the homelessness organisation, Streets Kitchen. Run by volunteers, including Boateng – many of whom have experience of homelessness – the Streets Kitchen maxim of “Solidarity not charity” is one Boateng identifies with. “It’s an amazing organisation. It’s not a charity; I call it a solidarity structure, a group of people coming together in solidarity for a specific cause to serve a community.” Grenfell, Boateng says, “was a very visceral and painful example of what happens when people are not seen as human beings”.
While his personal ambition is to be a barrister specialising in human rights, on a wider level he is driven to try to reduce the “distance between people” and to promote equality. Boateng’s academic studies (his first degree was in linguistics, and his thesis examined how the use of slang by defendants might affect jurors) and then a spell as a volunteer at the Human Rights Advocacy Centre in Ghana helped shape his approach to social justice by emphasising empowerment.
A stint at the human rights group Global Dialogue, followed by an internship with the human rights organisation RightsInfo, provided the framework for his community work. Human rights takes a battering from the mass media, Boateng argues, so watching how RightsInfo “is putting out positive messages and trying to change the general narrative on what human rights are and what it does for people, that was really influential”, he says. It also taught him about what it takes to run a small organisation and “fundamentally what it takes to change perceptions”, he says.
Boateng wants the project to become self-sustaining with income from paid-for production work being reinvested in PFF.
Asked if he worries his fledgling initiative might not achieve all that he wants, Boateng is sanguine.
“One of the things I was scared of, initially, going into Project Five Fifths was that it’s too big – there are too many things to look at. But running it has given me the confidence to say not only is it OK for it to be broad, it’s necessary.”
Curriculum vitae
Age: 22
Lives: Croydon, south London.
Family: Single
Education: St Joseph’s College (secondary school), London; La Retraite sixth form (co-ed); University of York, BA linguistics; London School of Economics and Political Science, MSc human rights
Career: 2017-present: founder, Project Five Fifths; 2017- present: founder, Thinking About Brexit (a student-led thinktank that aims to find a positive vision for post-Brexit Britain); 2017, intern for two months, Portland Communications; 2017: intern for three months, RightsInfo; 2016-17: intern for three months, Global Dialogue; 2016: intern at Human Rights Advocacy Centre, Ghana.
Public life: Volunteer, Streets Kitchen.
Interests: Watching and playing football; being awestruck by Terrence Malick films; discovering new musicians such as Boadi, Zealyn and Xavier Omar.
