Exclusive: The Inside Story on How Stormzy Transformed the Diversity Conversation in the UK

BY PATRICK CROWDER

When you think about Oxbridge education, grime music probably isn’t the first place your mind goes. Nevertheless, world famous rapper Stormzy looks right at home talking to Cambridge students and professors about his scholarship programme for black students. At six-foot-five, the 28-year-old towers over the crowd gathered outside the historic university buildings on a rare sunny day.

“Every time I see Cambridge students I always make it a proper point to let them know ‘you lot are sick!’, but because I’m a rapper, sometimes it can sound corny like ‘read your books guys, it’s cool to stay in school, kids!’ But genuinely, as someone who’s tried to be one of you lot, it’s f**king difficult! It was so difficult, so I know first-hand.”

As Stormzy chats with the students, it becomes clear just how much respect he has for their achievements and what they represent. In his childhood Stormzy, then known as Michael Omari, was a high flyer in school, winning praise from his teachers and earning impressive marks. However, as he jokingly admits, he was also frequently “the one to throw a sandwich at someone’s head during assembly”.

“I’ve always considered myself to be very smart, not to be arrogant you know,” he explains. “For GCSEs I got all the grades, I got to A-levels and said ‘this is tricky’, got to A2 and it was like, pfft. School was a breeze, I smashed my GCSEs to pieces, loads of A*s, but when I went to college I was like ‘wow, this is what it’s like actually being a student’, and that transition was so difficult.”

Like many students who find school easy at a young age, Stormzy became bored of his education and did not develop proper study habits. He and the people around him always predicted that he would earn a spot at one of the nation’s top universities, but he blames a lack of focus, complacency, and troublemaking on his failure to get a place.

Stormzy was expelled from Stanley Technical High School when he “put loads of chairs on another student” in what he described as “just banter”. The administration took a different view –and just like that, his shot at going to Cambridge was gone. Stormzy laughs as he explains how his early perceptions of what it takes to get into Cambridge led him to start the Stormzy Scholarship.

“When I was younger, the reason I thought I could come to Cambridge is because I just thought, ‘I’m smart.’ I didn’t think nothing else. Luckily, I wasn’t tainted by what I’d heard from people, like society and that. I didn’t even think about my criminal record!”

The Stormzy Scholarship

“I did quite alright at A-levels, I got A, B, C, D, and at the time I was gutted but now looking back it’s like that’s not too bad. But you’ve got people here who’ve got A*, A*, A*, A*. I think when you get to that stage natural ability becomes second to focus, and commitment, and working hard, which is the difficult bit because you get someone like me who went through school naturally gifted, but then it’s like… that juice just doesn’t work here.”

Stormzy has an admirable respect for learning – and so, while there’s criticism out there about him, it’s hard to escape this central fact about him. “As much as people think rappers, footballers, and celebrities are glorified, trust me – learning, education, and reading is a much more powerful and beneficial thing,” Stormzy has said.

It is no secret that the Oxbridge experience has traditionally been a white one, and a male one. Together with Stormzy, Cambridge University is trying to change that.

In 2018, Cambridge announced a partnership with Stormzy; the Stormzy

Scholarship. In the beginning, the scholarship supported two black students a year, giving them full tuition and a maintenance grant throughout their time at Cambridge. This year, 13 students have been given that opportunity. The highprofile programme aims to change the perception of Cambridge and make it clear that students from all backgrounds are welcome, and the evidence says that it’s working. Dubbed ‘the Stormzy effect’, Cambridge has seen a massive influx of black students. Between 2017 and 2020, Cambridge saw an over 50 per cent increase in the number of black students admitted to undergraduate courses, and even higher numbers of applications.

Jesse Panda is the President of the African and Caribbean Society (ACS) at Cambridge. He’s a first-year engineering student with some big ideas on how to improve the black experience at Cambridge. We asked him about the socalled “Stormzy Effect”.

“I think that’s an accurate name. I think the support from someone as high up as Stormzy makes black students who want to come to Cambridge feel more welcome,”Panda explains.“They think, ‘Okay, there’s a system for me – maybe I won’t get the scholarship, but I can see that they’re trying to put a system in place to be more welcoming to black students.’”

The numbers show that Cambridge’s efforts to welcome black students seem to be working, but removing a centurieslong stigma is not easy. And, as Panda points out, even with record numbers of black students attending Cambridge, white students still far outnumber them.

“I think the main problem is removing that stigma – the perception that Cambridge is not a place for black students – and, to be frank, it’s still got a long way to go,” Panda continues.

“I feel that I’m fortunate, but not as fortunate as I could be, if you see what I mean. I’m lucky to not be one out of 40 black students as it was in the past, but now I’m still only one out of 180 black students, whereas a white student will be one out of 2,000 or so.”

Removing that stigma is exactly what Stormzy has set out to do.“When we first launched the scholarship, I always said that I wanted it to serve as a reminder that the opportunity is there. If you’re academically brilliant, don’t think that because you come from a certain community that studying at one of the highest education institutions in the world isn’t possible,”Stormzy has said.

Jesse Panda and the other members of the ACS are doing their best through events and outreach programmes to show that Cambridge is a place which welcomes black students. However, due to the lack of diversity within both the university and the city itself, Panda says that he understands if some black students decide that it isn’t the place for them.

“We had an offer holiday through the ACS, so future students were able to see what the society was doing. It was more welcoming for them, because they could see that Cambridge is not just a space for white people, it’s also accommodating for black people as well,” Panda explains. “I think we need more opportunities like that because Cambridge is not very diverse. In the media, it is pushed that Cambridge has no space for black people, when in reality there are spaces – but if someone doesn’t want to come here because of the imbalance, that would make sense to me.”

Despite this, Panda is optimistic about the future of black students at Cambridge, while also realising that there is much work to be done. He is enjoying his first year in the city, and the ACS has provided a place for him to liaise with other black students and make a lasting change for the future of the university. While Panda’s experience has been a good one overall, the lack of diversity is still a large departure from his life in London.

“I think that’s always going to be there to be honest. As much as Cambridge is taking steps in the right direction, when you look at Cambridge you still see a white environment. I haven’t been as intimidated as I thought I would be, because there are more black students than I thought there would be. But coming to Cambridge from London is still a big jump in terms of diversity.” For Stormzy, the scholarship is a symbolic continuation of his own stalled academic journey and a way to provide an opportunity to students which he did not have himself.

“I actually look back at my school years and say that they’re the best years of my life,” Stormzy says. “I was reminded by my teachers that I was destined to study at one of the top universities if I wanted to go down that path, but I diverted and ended up doing music so it didn’t happen to me. But I felt like I was a rare case in the sense that I knew it was possible, which I feel like is not always the case. When students are young, academically brilliant, and they are getting the grades, they should know that’s an option.”

Grime and violence

Having secured a place as a music star known partly as a lyricist, Stormzy’s views have often been sought on education. On one occasion he responded to criticism of the message in his music in conversation with Charlamagne Tha God: “You say,‘Let’s learn about Shakespeare’, but Shakespeare has stories of bloodbaths and murder, so I always say,‘I am as positive as Shakespeare, I’m as negative as Shakespeare.’Let’s get out Shakespeare stories right now and go through them one by one.”

Of course, these sort of remarks open Stormzy up to the observation that he has a long way to go before he can be said to display the nuance and poetry of the UK’s most famous writer, and some will raise eyebrows at him even making the comparison.

So that while Stormzy’s charity work is undeniably a force for good, it can be hard to reconcile this positive impact on young people with the negative impact which his lyrics are often said to have. Grime does not shy away from portraying life in underrepresented communities, which can include depictions of crime, violence, and sexism.

Katharine Birbalsingh CBE is an experienced educator who chairs the

Social Mobility Commission. She is also co-founder of Michaela Community School in Wembley, a free school which has been described as the strictest school in Britain. Birbalsingh takes issue with Stormzy’s influence because she sees his lyrics to be glorifying crime and sending young people down a wayward path.

“Yes, some love Stormzy and other drill, grime, rap etc. artists who are misogynistic, glorify violence, wear stab vests etc.They don’t care how it destroys the lives of boys in the inner city.They think it is cool.They even campaign to teach Stormzy over Mozart in schools,”Birbalsingh tweets. She later posted screenshots of a conversation between herself and a prison officer who was commending her for “exposing Stormzy as a poor role model” and detailing the kinds of destructive media prisoners often identify with.

Birbalsingh adds,“Those of you promoting do.”

It is worth remembering that grime is by no means the first genre of music accused of corrupting the younger generation, and it will not be the last. Even Baroque music was initially seen as an ungodly thing – a passing trend