Category: Editorial

Southwark.TV Festival of Film & Local Media 2024_What Was On

organised by Community TV Trust with Elevated Minds CIC & Michelle Baharier FRSA

12-16 February 2024

for young + old alike … Southwark films & videos … celebrated 20 years of local people speaking out

FESTIVAL THEMES:  

YOUTH | MENTAL HEALTH | COMMUNITY | FILM & LOCAL MEDIA

Monday 12 Feb: 6-8pm LAUNCH Film “from Local to Social” [cert 12A, 2023] Q+A followed  VENUE: Peckhamplex cinema, 95A Rye Lane SE15 4ST.

Southwark from 2003

Tuesday 13 Feb: 11-2pm  ASPIRATION: 3 x 60mins* [recorded for podcast, see below] Three approaches to stimulating purpose and self belief in life, with Stephen Akinsanya, Rachel Duncan and others. These events were aimed especially at young people. Presented by Festival partner Elevated Minds CIC.

Tuesday 13 Feb: 12.30-2.30pm LARGACTYL SHUFFLE was led by Festival partner, Michelle Baharier FRSA who reflects on the housing and some of the famous who pass through. It came in a long tradition of Southwark Walks that for mental health sufferers symbolised their journey towards wellbeing and were social too. VENUE for the start: Theatre Peckham

Michelle Baharier muses on the Southwark she passes through

Tuesday 13 Feb: 3-5pm  Two creative interventions Taking Control with key life skills: first was Peer Mediation with Mel Bruce of Calm Mediation:

Peer mediators from Bacon’s College

This was followed by entrepreneur George Osei-Oppong Junior with a presentation on Financial Education. These represent two creative interventions in young lives.

Wed 14 Feb: 11.30-12.30pm “Why the change, be the change!”   Bias comes in many forms: how do we deal with it? Stephen Bourne, the local author of Black British History, joined Doreen Sinclair-McCollin and others. An Elevated Minds event.

Stephen Bourne, British Black History author

Wed 14 Feb:  2pm-3.30pm  Community & f/Faith* [event recorded for podcast]  “In a multicultural society does belief have a role?” A round table discussion with some of Southwark’s leading thinkers was recorded for podcasting. Guests included former Mayor Althea Smith, current local top cop DCS Adjei-Addoh, legendary community activist Eileen Conn (Peckham Vision), two young people from Elevated Minds, retired judge Marcia Levy, former director of Bede House Nick Dunne, and long serving local police officer Nsikan Etuk from Southwark’s Faith & Engagement team.

Thurs 15 Feb:  10-11.30am  Short films for Year 4-6  A mixed bag of funny and challenging films made by young people over the years from 2003.

Films from young and old
Mystery and conflict resolution

Thurs 15 Feb: 2-4pm  Mental Health Forum*    Organised by long time campaigner for Mental Health rights, Michelle Baharier FRSA with guests Dolly Sen and Kym Winstanley. Michelle hung her work at the venue, Theatre Peckham for the Festival and a further three weeks afterwards.

Michelle’s presentation led off
Sue Elsegood
campaigner Baroness Jane Campbell
From Bonkersfest to Theatre Peckham
Kym talks and sings at Theatre Peckham (audio only)

Thurs 15 Feb: 4-6pm  Violence & Mental Health*  With special guest Jonathan Asser about whose therapeutic theory of Shame linking to Violence a film was made in 2013. Asser worked with inmates for 10 years at HMP Wandsworth with positive results but the work was stopped. With Asser on the Q+A panel after a screening of the film were former SVI group member Tola Gisanrin, co-founder and Head of Authenticity at Black Elephant, a social network based on vulnerability, and Andrew Nielsen of Howard League for Penal Reform.

Intro – Screening of SVI film – Discussion/Q+A

Friday 16 Feb: 6-9pm  SOUTHWARK’S GOT TALENT 2024 Closing the Festival week with style and decibels was a talent show for local people with serious aspirations in the performing arts. Event organised by Elevated Minds CIC.

Song, roller skate and hoola hoop

All events were free.

Community TV Trust in partnership with

ELEVATED MINDS CIC

and Michelle Baharier FRSA

BROOKWOOD: The Living and The Dead

CTVT’s documentary, produced with Ole Jensen who brought the recent Millwall FC film project, explores the world of minority burial grounds and Victorian foundations of today’s multicultural Britain.

There are powerful stories in this film of migration, sometimes over centuries, of refugees fleeing war, of economic migrants who find they have put down roots and stay, of community, of respect and love.

“LET’S TALK” Knife Crime Discussion Forums

Community TV Trust won funding from The Peckham Settlement to run “LET’S TALK”, a project on knife crime, in early 2019. The programme of discussion forums for young people to speak at has now concluded. Work on production of a documentary film and two performance films to tour Southwark and south London has begun. These will certainly stimulate thought and debate and inspire other young people.

A5 FLYER v3

Here is a short film introducing the Southwark world of knife crime as registered by its young people across the LET’S TALK Forums:

The 2019 series of Discussion Forums started at Surrey Square Primary School in January to listen to young people aged ten or eleven; moved to Bermondsey’s Bede Youth Adventure Project in early February to hear from 13 year olds, and in late February met 16 year old students at Harris Academy Peckham in central Southwark. LET’S TALK returned to HAP for the fifth and final Forum in early July.

Screen Shot 2019-03-23 at 22.24.32

The key ingredient throughout was the Panel of professionals invited by Community TV Trust to attend the Forums and listen to how young people described their world. The Panel convened in March to deliberate over what they had heard and consider what actions to take.

Panel members at the final Forum comprised a Deputy Director of Policy and the Ministry of Justice, a QC who sits as a Judge, a youth pastor, a Stop & Search consultant,  a music teacher and an academic, with Chris Haydon, Director of Community TV Trust as chair. All spoke about their ideas and actions:

1  bereaved parents of a recent Harris pupil were enabled to meet the Prime Minister as a direct result of two panel members speaking together;

2  an academic studying the policing of Southwark suggested a controversial idea* – no longer using the Police to combat knife crime … but all other agencies instead should get involved, namely parents schools youth services and so on;

3  Stop & Search required both parties to learn to be more respectful of each other, Police officers as much as young people;

4  Educating Parents was requested by Harris students and CTVT has agreed to host a website and YouTube channel with students driving content generation. CTVT will seek funding for this expansion of LET’S TALK;

5  Young people were urged to communicate more with the Police;

6  All were urged to provide care for victims, and this included families of perpetrators as well as of the victims. One Panel member spoke of her personal loss through a knife crime and her sorrow contemplating the convicted killer’s family who effectively lost their son too, as he will spend the next twenty five years in prison.

Community TV Trust wishes to thank its partners for this successful first year of discussion forums: they are Surrey Square Primary School, Bede Youth Adventure Project, Harris Academy Peckham. Each partner played host to one of the series of Forums.

*CTVT will publish this proposal in full as soon as possible.

2018 Autumn Update

CTVT won funding from The Peckham Settlement for a knife crime project that focuses on discussion forums for young people and a documentary film to be taken into schools. The discussion forums will be attended by 30+ students who will be listened to by a ‘panel’ of 12 or more professionals from across Government, Police, education, community liaison, faith, the arts, sport, youth work, and so on. The first event is scheduled for 31st October at 6pm, with a central Southwark venue to be announced. The job of the ‘panel’ will be to listen hard across the four events and then come together on a fifth occasion to reflect on all that they will have heard, to share insights and ideas, to consider whether there are clear action points emerging from the process. Themes for these open discussion forums will be:

Home Life & Parenting;

Peer Pressure, Drugs & Gangs;

Social Life, Sex & Self Esteem

Sport & Wellbeing.

On 25th October there will be a screening at Peckhamplex of Chris Haydon/CTVT’s latest documentary commission, a film about Millwall FC and its past fifty years. The story is told predominantly by older black fans and black players. The one-hour film will soon be available online via this website. It was directed/edited by Chris and produced by Ole Jensen for Bede House. Also for Bede House will be a new promotional video currently in post production.

Meanwhile, CTVT continues to support Freewheelers Theatre & Media Company with its filmmaking expertise, with a Film Night coming up on 7th November at Dorking Halls in Dorking. At this event films will be shown from the two weekly workshops running in Leatherhead and Cobham for disabled adults: in the line up will be a half hour drama and three songs marking the centenary of the 1918 Armistice ending the First World War.

UK Comedy Hit: Transport & The Disabled

Chris Hogg is witty, musical and pro-active. He lives in Cheam and travels to Leatherhead to attend workshops with Freewheelers Theatre & Media Company. Or at least that’s the idea.

In reality, staff at Cheam disappear at midday leaving no-one to manage Chris’s travel. He uses a power wheelchair and without staff is left stranded. His activities are therefore cut short or cut altogether.

He plans to produce a satire on Southern Rail, their strikes and cynicism, but when life is stranger than fiction, you can be left struggling. The Media Group at Freewheelers has explored “W1A”, Monty Python and the whole history of absurdist comedy for a style that suits the material. First of all though, Chris has to find a way of travelling to Leatherhead.