Safe Spaces

Our unnamed narrator survives in London on a combination of Universal Credit, music production and songwriting, trying to figure out what she wants from the city, and whether the city is prepared to give it to her. Navigating love affairs and blinded by grief following the death of her closest confidante, Safe Spaces is a portrait of the artist as a young musician. Of the DJ booths, green rooms and dance floors that shape her, and the worlds she finds herself in: be they the grime and electronic nightclubs, her Turkish-Cypriot family, the beauty parlour, the studio. At once a songbook, a collection of aphorisms, a therapy transcript and a community journal, Safe Spaces is a work of extraordinary lyricism and candour, confirming Tice Cin as one of the foremost stylists of her generation. An intimate portrait of a community and a moving personal reckoning, it fearlessly asks: can the dream of a safe space ever be realised?