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A film features girls and boys as young as eight rapping about being members of gangs and wanting to shoot rivals.

The children, members of the Acre Lane Campaign (ALC) in Brixton, south London, boast how they were recruited to the gang.

In one clip, an eight-year-old girl waves the ALC’s trademark blue scarf before rapping to the camera: “F*** your mum, I’ll shoot my gun, ’cos ALC bang bang bang.”

The first-hand account of gang culture, made by Shanelle Bartley, 18, who used to live on the Acre Lane estate, shows that young children, not just teenagers, are being inculcated into a gang ethos, after being recruited by their siblings.

One boy in the film, who appears to be no more than nine, raps to the camera: “I’ll take out my pistol and bust your knees in. The next day you’re on the floor bleedin’.”

Bartley made the short film, Pushed to the Trigger, as part of her studies at Lambeth College nearby. She said: “The people in the film, I have known them since I was little. They didn’t start off as a gang but nowadays everyone wants to rule a certain area – it’s territorial war.”

Bartley now lives a mile or two away in Stockwell, where she has also encountered gangs. “I was prompted to make it by my own life,” she said. “I want young people to see that you don’t have to copy others.”

Shaun Bailey, a youth worker and Conservative parliamentary candidate, said: “Where are the parents in all of this? It is still rare and we have time to turn the situation around.”

Bartley’s film is one of 10 documentaries nominated for the Lambeth Oskars, an awards ceremony to be held next week for first-time film makers with the theme Girls, Guns and Gods.

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