Ore Ogunbiyi and Chelsea Kwakye’s Taking Up Space Is Coming To Our TV Screens!

A beautiful thing gets even more beautiful.

2018 saw Stormzy create initiatives designed to give back to his community and also aid social mobility by mediating access for kids like him in underrepresented spaces and piggybacking off the strength of his platform to help address this. Two of the more prominent beneficiaries were Nigerian British, Ore Ogunbiyi and Ghanaian British, Chelsea Kwakye whose book, Taking Up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto For Change was published by Stormzy’s imprint, #Merky Books. The book documented their time at the prestigious Cambridge University where the feeling of underrepresentation, race struggles and the composite weight of that informed their experience and the need to create something people could learn from.

As a result of the book’s success and importance, it has been announced that the book will be adapted for television by Sid Gentle Films (the producers of the successful show Killing Eve). In a statement they said;

We are delighted to be working on this extraordinary manifesto for hope with Chelsea and Ore. The world they illuminate is full of potential for creating bold and breakthrough characters in a setting few have seen. This is really exciting.

The Authors also said

We are so incredibly excited to be working with Sid Gentle Films. They have a strong understanding of the core themes of Taking Up Space and are committed to bringing them to life on screen. This is a real dream come true.

via The Book Seller