London Young Voices is a 3-year scheme running up to August 2012, created by Chris Haydon, director of Community TV Trust. In late July a number of its films produced between January 2009 and May 2010 were screened at the BFI as part of the Flipside Film Festival. The film by St Michael & All Angels Academy was singled out in the review by Lorraine Smith for remotegoat.co.uk:
‘All of the films had a positive message for and about young people; particularly London Young Voices film Choices which tackles the current debate on knife crime, and proves that the younger generations have a lot of inspiration and creativity to inject into the Arts and Society.’
We are about half way through our project and London Young Voices will continue to produce multimedia demonstration of young people’s innate gifts for self expression, inspiration and the good.
Projects in the second phase began in mid September 2009 in four Southwark schools: Harris Academy at Peckham, Goose Green Primary School, St Michael & All Angels Academy, SILS 4 (pupil referral unit).
Work produced by Goose Green Primary School in the pilot phase of London Young Voices in early 2009 is available on YouTube and can be viewed via Southwark.TV and the Goose Green section of that local website. The Year 6 pupils produced three short films – a game show with an ethical heart, a dance film between rival gangs who overcome their differences, and a skateboard drama confronting bullying.
The full London Young Voices project is under the direction of Chris Haydon and is being co-ordinated by CTVT volunteer Julianna Waithe.
Community TV Trust entered into partnership with the new Peckham art space, Peckham Space, and local artist Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, for collaboration at Peckham Academy and exhibition in June 2010 as the inaugural show of Peckham Space. This new gallery stands in front of the Peckham Library.
London Young Voices encourages young people’s creativity and positivity. The image of young people in the media is generally negative, yet they face significant challenges and difficulties in daily life, not least in the form of gang culture, youth crime and weapons carrying, job prospects and student debt. A few years ago the Children’s Commissioner noted that in excess of 80% of news stories concerning young people in mainstream media were negative. At least nowadays young people can produce their own media in response to this sad state of affairs.
London Young Voices projects during Autumn 2009/Spring 2010 produced a total of thirteen films, making sixteen in all from 2009 -a great start to this 3-year project. If we include the two additional projects produced with Bede Youth Adventure Project the total rises to eighteen.
In September 2008 media students, under the guidance of Chris Haydon, CTVT Director, launched a local media website in Hertfordshire along CTVT lines. The notion of twinning local life with a ready-made unpaid student workforce is an obvious ‘BIg Society’ gambit. No wages to find, but the trick is building the relationships that make this do-able. Here are sample comments from the second year National Diploma students who clearly responded to the idea of using the classroom to produce material that had a role in the real world outside:
The local TV lobby has pushed and pushed and frankly got nowhere. Ofcom’s determination to auction off spectrum released by Digital Switchover has been evident for a long time.
In recent times the CMA, Community Media Association, has engaged energetically with the world of community and TV; Community TV Trust has lined up with the CMA lobby on behalf of those promoting local TV (in the broadcast model) despite its own clear preference for the broadband option of delivery; even Parliament has started to pipe up with a growing understanding of what community media can offer to the individual … yet to no avail.