What the UK is most afraid of has come from overseas, taking our jobs and making it unsafe to walk the streets. This is the opening message of a widely shared video on coronavirus that subverts racist language often directed at immigrants, showing that those who have experienced discrimination are now key workers, trying to keep people safe. The clip – which has gone viral worldwide – features UK residents, immigrants and people of foreign heritage who are medics, delivery drivers and teachers working hard amid the Covid-19 outbreak. They read a poem, penned by Darren James Smith, entitled You Clap for Me Now. The video’s producer, Sachini Imbuldeniya, said: “The United Nations released a global brief to all creatives to spread messages of positivity, kindness and solidarity during these uncertain times. The brief was very open in terms of what content was created. My good friend and colleague Darren Smith wrote the poem. We both work together at Bridge Studio. “He previously interviewed my mum, a retired nurse, for an article that ran in the Sunday Times magazine about the Windrush scandal and feels very passionately about the subject, as do I. When I read the poem I knew the message needed to be spread as widely as possible, so we decided to turn it into a short and shareable video featuring a mixture of first-, second- and third-generation immigrants living in the UK.” She said the biggest restriction to making the film was the UK lockdown. “I messaged lots of people on Instagram and also friends and family to see if they would be interested in taking part and each filming themselves reciting one line from the poem that I allocated to them.” The video was edited by Ruben Alvarado. It features Tez Ilyas, a British standup comedian of Pakistani descent, as well as others including doctors Kiran Rahim and Mehwish Sharif. Smith said: “I only wrote a poem 10 days ago and it came together very quickly but I wrote it and showed it to Sachini Imbuldeniya and she loved it and wanted to make a film out of it. The original idea was really hers and she created the film and worked out the logistics of it and how we can film when people are in their homes. She coordinated it from there, bringing people together.” Smith said of first meeting Imbuldeniya, when he interviewed her mother: “It was really interesting talking to her mum about how we really valued immigrants coming over to help the NHS. Windrush was all about bringing people over to help due to labour shortage after world war two. They were doing us a huge favour as well as building a new life.” “That was the background to it and then with the pandemic we are all going outside to clap for carers, which is a lovely thing. It struck me how quickly it had changed from these people being unskilled to being essential key workers and reframed how we think about them. That is brilliant, but her mum’s story came to me and I thought, let’s just make sure when this all ends and we emerge into a light that we don’t allow the narrative to slip back to immigrants taking our jobs and xenophobic language that you read everywhere.” He said he realised the parallel between far-right rhetoric, “them taking our jobs and making us feel trapped”, and how it was a good description of how “we feel now thanks to the virus”. The poem reads: “So, it’s finally happened. That thing you were afraid of. Something has come from overseas. And taken your jobs. Made it unsafe to walk the streets. Kept you trapped in your home. A dirty disease. Your proud nation gone. But not me. Or me. Or me. No you clap for me now. You cheer as I toil. Bringing food to your family. Bringing food from your soil. Propping up your hospitals. Not some foreign invader. Delivery driver. Teacher. Life saver.” Imbuldeniya said: “I definitely wasn’t expecting it [the video] to go viral, but am so glad that it has as I feel like it’s such an important message to send out. Not just for the UK, but globally. Comedian and actor Tez Ilyas has been truly amazing. He took part in the video and also shared it on all of his social channels, which helped massively.” Smith said they had been overwhelmed by the response, with #YouClapForMeNow trending on UK Twitter on Wednesday morning. “The great thing is the vast majority of responses have been positive and very rare for Twitter, I think. There are inevitably trolls and people poking holes in it. Some complain about turning clapping into a political football, which is not our intention,” he said.