Young People’s Sexual Health Project

The Young People’s Sexual Health Project was led by as director Michael Hamilton under the auspices of the NHS, and McMillan was brought in develop a number of projects in a collaborative context. The process often included workshops led Jointly by Hamilton and McMillan in formal education contexts with schools and colleges, and youth and community based settings. McMillan used material from this process to compile, edit and design publications, such as Growing Up is Hard to Do, write and direct performance pieces, and co-ordinate seminars, some of which are included here:

Shifting Perspectives

At the time of writing, Lewisham has a second highest rate of teenage pregnancy in London and joint third highest rates in England with Kingston-upon-Hull. The Young People’s Sexual Project was asked by the Lewisham Teenage Pregnancy Strategy to develop a creative project that explored issues and the lived experience of teenage pregnancy and parenthood through art and performance. McMillan and Aneka Lee, and visual, comic and graphic artists: Andrew Sinclair, Jennifer Diedrick-Edwards, Saban Kazim, Tayo Fatunla and Renee Selby worked with a culturally diverse group of young parents from southeast London.

Oral history material from this process was used in a series of devised and improvisation based workshops led by McMillan, with young performing artists: Carla Louise Lee, Charlie Comber, Kerry Blake, Matthew Maddigan and Schakara Notice. The outcome was a performance piece, Something to Love, written and directed by McMillan, which was presented as part of Shifting Perspective at The Albany Theatre Deptford on Thursday 13 May 2004.

Shifting Perspective was an all-day event that included workshops, interactive activities and film screenings led by, made by, and for young people, as well as an installation that consisted of artwork created in response to the lived experiences of young parents, which was used as a set during the performance of Something to Love.

Programme for Shifting Perspective:

Things that need to be said

In response to the election Barack Obama, the first Black US president in November 2008, the Young People’s Health Project made a call out to the local Black communities in London to share their responses to this historic event, which compiled in a small publication that McMillan. The booklet was subsequently given out at a cultural event held at the Broadway Theatre, Catford, South London on Tuesday 20th January 2009, the day of Obama’s inauguration.