Pain into Purpose

Pain into Purpose is a project comprising of two short films developed by the ACLT in collaboration with Poetic Unity a Brixton based charity empowering young people to use poetry as a tool to access their highest potential. Together we aimed to shed light on the struggles faced by young Black people living with Sickle Cell Disorder. Each film centres on an individual using their lived experience through the medium of poetry to educate the viewer about the condition. The poetry seen in the film was produced following a one-day masterclass where young people were informed by the ACLT about current factual and statistical data around sickle cell to help write and perform their spoken word piece.

By channelling pain powerful storytelling poetry, the films aimed to incentivise more young people of Black heritage to sign up to be blood donors and hear directly from those living with or affected by the condition. Currently only 2% of all regular blood donors are of Black heritage, even though they are 10 times more likely to have the RO blood subtype needed to successfully treat sickle cell patients through blood transfusion.