LET’S TALK, CTVT’s four year project looking for breakthrough initiatives to confront the scourge of knife crime, is in its second year. Lockdown with Covid-19 caused the loss of only one scheduled Forum, at Dulwich College. The other five events involving schools and youth clubs took place as planned.
The country generally but inner cities and London especially are still facing loss of life, fear and a rise in violent crime. Figures for 2019 showed another rise – 7%. This is usually perpetrated by just a few but affects the many.
Young people in the 2020 series of Forums spoke passionately and sometimes angrily about racism both in the Police and even in schools. Tougher sentences were wanted, and some students called for the reintroduction of the death penalty.
Community TV Trust [CTVT], in schools and PRUs and workshops for the disabled and marginalised, offers media training & filmmaking, engaging people and young people in open-ended creative work, linking Community to Education. Featured above is a scene from a musical drama about knife crime created by Year 9 students at Harris Academy Peckham.
Partnering CTVT in the second year of LET’S TALK were Ark Walworth Academy, Blue Elephant Theatre, Highshore School, Dulwich College, plus Surrey Square Primary School and Bede Youth Adventure Project returning for a second year.
CTVT has produced a large number of film dramas with the students at local Southwark schools, primary and secondary, and youth clubs, and shot a one-hour documentary with students and staff at Cavendish School in Bermondsey.
Chris Haydon, who founded Community TV Trust in 1999, worked in broadcast TV as a director and producer, learning his trade as a documentary filmmaker on 16mm at Granada TV in Manchester.
Chris Haydon
Director
Community TV Trust
07970 970 715
chris@communitytvtrust.org