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MICKY’S CHARITY AIMS TO HELP YOUNGSTERS COPING WITH STRESSES OF LOCKDOWN

MICKY Dacks knows better than most how it feels to be locked down.

As a child, he would sit under a bush outside his family home, often for hours, waiting for his dad to come home and let him in.

Years later, he became homeless and lived in the undergrowth of Stott Lane Fields in Salford – once again locked out of normal life.

At his lowest point, he was locked up in prison for nine months.

The difficult experiences he suffered in his formative years eventually led Micky to set up his own charity.

I4YPC (Innit 4 Young People Charity) encourages young people to express themselves through the arts and, crucially, teaches them to have ambition.

Micky says ‘aspiration’ has become a dirty word.

He wants young people to take on challenges that will test their creativity. He has set up the ‘RapYourTown’ competition to inspire 13 to 19-year-olds to rap about their home town.

Micky worries coronavirus lockdowns have affected some children and teenagers more than others.

So he hopes the competition – funded by ICT company Dataspire Solutions – will draw them out of themselves.

Entrants are being asked to take inspiration from the original rap scene and use drum beats and the structure of Coolio’s hit song Gangsta’s Paradise as inspiration.

The competition has even had the personal seal of approval from Stevie Wonder, whose Past Time Paradise was sampled in the 1995 rap classic.

The winner will get a pair of Beats headphones – but more than that, Micky hopes it will inspire creativity in tough times.

He says TikTok and Instagram have eroded the meaning of rap.

“A lot of these kids think they can rap but they stand there in their bubble jackets moving their hands around and giving it attitude, but it doesn’t mean anything,” he says.

“This competition is a chance for young people to look at their surroundings and notice things. There are so many stories to be told.

“This is your chance to step out of your life. How do you feel about being locked down? Do you feel anxious and confused? What do you see when you go out?

“Instead of going on video games, just step outside yourself and create a narrative. Everyone writes. Everyone has thoughts. Just give it a go.

“Don’t end up on the fringes of society like me.”

Micky’s journey to the ‘fringes of society’ started at the age of nine, when he set fire to his local shop - with the shopkeeper still in it.

“He didn’t give me a paper round but he gave other boys a paper round,” he explains. “In my view that was other kids getting the attention when I was not. I guess that was my way of expressing my anger. At the time I didn’t think about the consequences of what I was doing.

“The police were always at our door when I was a kid. At that age I couldn’t hold my hands up. I just denied it.”

Micky was bullied at school and became fascinated with setting fires, something he says helped him ‘dissociate.’

By the time he was 15, he had been excluded from school. He ended up on the streets of Manchester being befriended by criminals. After living on the streets in London he came back to Salford, living in fields near Salford Royal Hospital.

Later on came a nine-month stint in prison for assault, fraud and criminal damage.

Throughout his life Micky has put pen to paper to work out his thoughts and when he was jailed, he carried on writing. But when he came out of prison Micky says he was lost.

He was encouraged by a probation officer, Chris Ashton, to share his poems and got a volunteer job at The Angel centre in Salford.

From there he was encouraged to go to an open mic night at The King’s Arms.

One evening Micky stood up, took the mic and read out some of his poetry.

By 2009, he had co-written, produced and directed the street-based urban musical ‘Innit’ – based on his own experiences.

The show premiered at The Lowry and worked to inspire youngsters to express themselves through creativity.

Then in 2019, he founded I4YPC to encourage and inspire young people to express themselves through dynamic experiences of the arts.

He says: “If I look back at my own past I can see how that influenced the road I travelled - which resulted in me being in prison - and how those rare moments of exposure to creativity gave me such great food for growth.

“If I’d been able to express the hurt, confusion and feelings I was suffering, then I know things would have been different.”

You can enter the RapYourTown competition at https://www.rapyourtown.