After 6 years of campaigning, justice has not been served for the 72 victims of the Grenfell fire, nor the surrounding Grenfell community they left behind.
After a toothless public enquiry, no arrests have been made and no accountability has been admitted by any of the private or public companies involved in the illegal cladding of the tower.
Each year since the tragedy, Here Be Dragons has worked with campaigning group Justice 4 Grenfell, in order to raise awareness of the lack of justice. This has involved some famous work including ‘Three Billboards for Grenfell’, ‘Grenfell x London Fashion Week’, and ‘The Platinum Jubilee Street Party for The Dead’.
Our objective for the 6th year anniversary, like every year, was to keep Grenfell in the news, to remind the media, the public and those in power that the Grenfell community will not be quiet until justice has been served. Widespread media coverage is our objective, generating national and consumer media attention.
Having peacefully protested for 5 years with different forms of activism, we decided that for the 6 year anniversary, we would be ‘loud’...
So we devised a music strategy, in keeping with the music heritage of the area, providing something different from previous years to keep media interest piqued.
To implement this strategy, we first enlisted the help of West London producer Toddla T. We approached him to help create a music track that could encapsulate the frustration of the community. Known as a dance/ grime artist who brings a lot of energy via his music, Toddla made us a 2 minute long ‘protest anthem’ that would not have been out of place on a dancefloor.
We managed to get grime artist (and TV personality) Big Zuu to also commit to the project, creating some lyrics to go over the music that would create the finished track. Recorded in Toddla’s West London studio, the finished piece of music was called ‘No Justice 4 Grenfell, No Peace’ - a modern protest track on behalf of the community.
Here Be Dragons designed the track artwork and the track was placed on Spotify with the rights holder designated as Justice 4 Grenfell, meaning that every stream of the track created royalties that went directly to the community.
We launched the track by shooting a music video with Toddla T and Big Zuu performing the song at the foot of Grenfell tower.
The campaign received over 70 pieces of national and consumer coverage including The Evening Standard, The Independent, The Express, ITV and widespread youth and music titles such as Clash and The Line of Best Fit and the ‘I’m Just Bait’ meme account, while the music track was included in key curated playlists and new ‘most played’ lists by Spotify on the launch weekend.
