Chart-topping rap star Dizzee Rascal is being invited to launch a summer season of fun events for youngsters in the Minsterley area.
Community campaigners believe the 2003 Mercury Prize winner would be the perfect figurehead for a “Future Versity” in the Rea Valley. It is all part of the Big Lottery Village SOS scheme designed to breathe new life into the former mining community.
The project, which includes transforming the closed village shop into a social centre, is led by ReaVEN, the Rea Valley Environmental Network.
ReaVEN chair Jonathan Brown said: “We want to work with young people here on a Future Versity that will put on free courses for 11 to 25 year olds. The aim is to excite and inspire them, bringing together the energy, skills and ideas of young people and employers. “This way of working has been pioneered by the Tower Hamlets Summer University in London’s East End, and they can help us to get their patron Dizzee Rascal up here to give our launch a real splash.”
Members of the Tower Hamlets Summer University will shortly visit Shrewsbury to meet ReaVEN leaders and to help get the Future Versity plans under way.
And Mr Brown said he hoped the rapper, whose hits include Bonkers and Holiday, would accept the invitation.
Dizzee attended a Tower Hamlets Summer University music production course when he was 15, which he says was the catalyst for his current huge success - describing it as his own X Factor.
Minsterley is the only village in the West Midlands to win through to the second round of the Village SOS rural revival project run by the Big Lottery and the BBC.
