Licklemor Lifts BAFTA for Life and Rhymes
Life and Rhymes, the-first-of- its-kind entertainment show that celebrates the spoken word has beaten Ant and Dec, The Masked Singer and Strictly Come Dancing to win the coveted BAFTA for Best Entertainment Programme.
The show is created by Licklemor Productions in collaboration with CPL productions, Licklemor is owned by MAMA YOUTH PROJECT.
Life & Rhymes is a four-part series for Sky Arts. Each 26-minute episode sees host, legendary poet Professor Benjamin Zephaniah, introduce a set of new poets who perform a piece of their own work, along with a performance from Benjamin himself. The programme explores topics that include racism, gender, sexuality and mental health.
Each episode features an open mic section, where randomly selected audience members are invited to share their own 60 second spoken word performance.
Life & Rhymes is the first show of its kind in the UK, solely dedicated to the spoken word performance and celebrates the very best poetry and spoken word talent the UK has to offer.
The Award presenters Stacey Dooley and Vick Hope read out the winning programme name in unison with Stacey Dooley giving a resounding “yes” as Benjamin Zepphaniah thanked BAFTA and Sky Arts for the opportunity to put out “such a pioneering programme that gives a voice to diverse people from all backgrounds”. Benjamin was joined in accepting the award by Isaac G Nartey, co- creator of Life & Rhymes and Bob Clarke, Chief Creative officer of Licklemor Productions.
Diverse people from all backgrounds are familiar ground for Bob Clarke, who is the founder of the MAMA Youth Project, a charity that owns Licklemor, and trains young people with challenging backgrounds from underrepresented groups to work in the Broadcast and Media Industry. The charity creates training and opportunities to secure long-term employment for these young people and feed an industry with the inclusion and diversity it so desperately needs.
On winning the award Bob says “This BAFTA award is recognition for us as producers. At MAMA Youth Project we have always said that we are not trainers, we are TV professionals showing young people the ropes. MAMA Youth Project formed Licklemor Productions as our commercial arm to nurture and support our alumni progression in the industry. The series producer on Life & Rhymes, Tanita Ojo Baptiste who was one of the first group of young people we trained. We also had other alumni in the production team who are all now BAFTA Award winners. I am very proud.”
MAMA Youth is no stranger to awards and has recently won Royal Television Society Community Award, Princess Royal Training Award and was nominated for Organisation of The Year by the Diversity in Media Award. Bob Clarke was also nominated Diversity Champion for the same award.
