Reece Williams

Reece Williams is a towering presence on the northern spoken word and poetry scene. He joined poetry collective Young Identity in 2007, performing across the UK and internationally with the likes of Saul Williams, Kae Tempest, The Last Poets and the late Amiri Baraka. His debut poetry collection (due to be released in Spring 2025), This Kind of Black, was enabled by ACE funding, and residencies with Apples and Snakes.

Reece is the former Community Engagement Manager for Manchester UNESCO City of Literature, and is the regular compere of legendary spoken word event One Mic Stand. A former trustee of Manchester’s renowned Contact Theatre, Reece is passionate about youth engagement, cultural policy and race relations. He embeds peer mentoring and advocacy of active citizenship through the arts into his professional practice. He was a longstanding Peer Mentor on The Agency, a UK-wide project delivered by Contact and Battersea Arts Centre to empower young people from economically deprived communities to create projects that foster social change.

Over the last year Reece has developed This Kind of Black as a concept for a theatre show. Reece is lead artist, writer and performer on the production. Funded by Jerwood Arts New Work Fund and ACE and inspired by the workshops delivered through the Poetry in Performance programme, Reece developed a full-length production from poems he had written for his upcoming debut poetry collection (This Kind of Black). Working with a full creative team led by the highly experienced dramaturg and producer Matt Fenton, former Artistic Director of Contact Theatre, Reece performed a sell-out show at HOME in Manchester and The Storyhouse (Chester).  

Alongside this, Reece has been working on high-profile commissions from the Guardian and Penguin. The Guardian commissioned him to write about Len Johnson, a famous Manchester-born boxer and race activist. The poem was published as part of their Cotton Capital series. Penguin commissioned Reece to write about Walter Tull, one of the first professional footballers of colour. The anthology was published in July 2023.