By Richard McKeever
One approach to countering the largely negative perceptions of poor communities in the mainstream media is to go it alone, and start producing the content yourself. New and cheaper technologies are making this easier to do, and it fits well with our belief that those who experience an issue understand it best. We have been keen to encourage the people we work with, particularly young people to tell their own stories.
Last summer as part of our work with young people we ran an “introduction to journalism” course. Our young reporters worked with national journalists to develop reporting skills and learn about work in the media. In a practical hands-on week of activity the young reporters worked with professional film makers on a film reflecting the state of child poverty in London as part of the Save The Children Wee Shots project.
The London film made up part of a national film – also made by young people and available to view here. It is a powerful report on the difficulties faced by communities experiencing poverty like ours here in east London.
We interviewed the young people involved in the project at the time to hear what they had learned during the process.
Today (Jan 27) at Community Links the Save the Children film is being presented to Community Links Staff, Trustees and the families of the young film makers at an event to celebrate their work and continue the discussions about the issues they reported on.
Several of the young people went on to form a reporting team for Chain Reaction our international conference event held last year at Canary Wharf. Our young reporters worked with theV-Inspired “Big V bus” to make a film in one day which was shown at the close of the event. Further film making and online media projects will continue over the forthcoming months as the young people we work with learn to use blogging, video and photography to tell their own story.
[...] they work together rather than against each other. Perhaps ignoring the mainstream media and producing your own content or starting conversations in communities is the way forward. And JRF’s excellent [...]