Whether it's stewarding at a festival, writing for a magazine, or producing works of art, volunteering for creative projects is bound to get those juices flowing.

All | Catherine | Rhiannon | Mei

Wednesday Jan 14, 2009

And scene...

The finished film and 'behind the scenes' were screened at a sharing event where all the various groups came together. Young people from different schools in east London had been working on separate projects – radio, drama, photography and film. Our group was first up, and the young people did a fab job of introducing the film. It was very well received, and I genuinely think ours was the best –though perhaps I would say that ; ).

 I had such a fun and challenging time on the project. It was better than I imagined it would be and I definitely felt I would miss collaborating with the young people. Though it may sound cliched, I really hope the project helped the students see what they are capable of achieving and I look forward to seeing what they do in the future.

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Thursday Jan 08, 2009

Sing for the Moment

In this last session we worked more on the editing process. One of the young people S aspires to be a music producer, and he took the opportunity to create an original song related to the film. He wrote the rap lyrics and music, and it turned out great!

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Thursday Jan 01, 2009

Making the cut...

We started working on the editing process – first watching the rushes and doing a paper edit, which involves writing down which parts you want to include. We then moved onto the actual edit, teaching the young people how to use the editing program on the computer. One group edited the film and the other edited the ‘behind the scenes’. We also had to film the different manifesto points. The one related to ‘allowing music on buses’ involved Anna and some of the young people jumping onto a bus and playing their music on the top deck. One of the young people who ‘wanted his voice to be heard’ had to shout this in the Sainsbury’s car park – who says filming is glamorous?! Though definitely one of the funniest moments was when we were going to film at the chicken shop. One of the manifesto points was ‘More choice in school canteens’. As the food of choice was fried chicken we were filming in a takeaway. There sitting in the takeaway happily munching away was one of our students skiving from the session! He was definitely shocked to see us but had great attendance after that.

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Monday Dec 01, 2008

You might call it a Towering Achievement... oh dear....

So here was the day we had been waiting for. Having arrived at the Tower a bundle of nerves and excitement, we were lucky enough to get a free tour and see the crown jewels - which really looked fake to me! We also got to see the grisly areas where Henry VIII wives were beheaded (and then had their heads sewn back on to be buried - which seemed a bit of an empty gesture!) and also where the young princes were thought to have been killed by Richard III. It was amazing to film in a place that had so much history and such importance. The young people were eager to get started, initially we debated the different possibilities for a dramatic entry and had to quickly veto the idea of throwing a rope over the wall and climbing up it ...  as sadly we didn’t quite have the funding (or the stunt people!) to hand… so we began by filming each of them stealthily trying to infiltrate the tower ninja style. This resulted in some funny looks from the general public...

Daniel was the educational officer who showed us around, and told us where we could and could not film. He suggested a great location which had been a dungeon where monks had been imprisoned at one time. It definitely had an eerie atmosphere and came across well on camera. The ‘freedom not boredom’ t-shirts I had carefully crafted were deemed not cool enough by the girls – which brought back memories of my own ‘quest for cool’ teenage years! But the boys gallantly offered to wear theirs.

The young people took it in turns directing, working on sound, filming and being filmed. When they weren’t involved in the main project we kept them busy filming a ‘behind the scenes’, which involved interviewing the participants. Everyone got very into this, honing their interviewing skills and taking it rather seriously... MTV stars of the future I think!

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Friday Nov 14, 2008

The Kids Are Revolting!

For this session I typed up the characters and manifesto points we then voted on the manifesto which looks like follows:

If young people ruled the world I would...

CREATE A DROP IN SCHOOL SYSTEM

MAKE ALL ADULTS TAKE PUBLIC TRANSPORT (TO HELP STOP DESTROYING THE PLANET)

CREATE A WIDER CHOICE IN ALL SCHOOL CANTEENS

LET MUSIC BE ALLOWED ON BUSES

MAKE YOUNG PEOPLE'S VOICES HEARD

Clearly some are more political and pertinent than others... but they should all make entertaining and informative vignettes.

After the young people had left we worked a bit later (til gone 9pm!) on finalising the script, writing a storyboard and making t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan created by the young people - 'Freedom not Boredom! We came up with some different names for the film. One I formulated was, 'The Kids are Revolting!' bit of a pun in there! This Saturday we begin the filming at the Tower... exciting stuff...

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Tuesday Nov 11, 2008

Justice will be served

We finished watching the film 'Twelve Angry Men', in which they find the young man not guilty. It was a powerful ending, but I'm not sure now how much of our film will be based on this, though the theme is still youth justice, the location now is... the Tower of London! So we need to fit our story around that. I think I'm more excited about the location than the young people are! As my parents have never been much inclined towards the tourist trail, so I'm looking forward to rectifying this...

We began loosely working on an idea that the young people now rule the world and figuring out why this is and just what they are going to do with this new found power.... Unsurprisingly a lot desired the dramatic demise of unpopular teachers and less school time! But some more serious points made it through also.

We also worked on characters for the film, one of my favourites was Jade, who 'is a racer like Lewis Hamilton, likes to show off, has a pretty face and everyone hates her'! We then played a game called 'Agree – Disagree' whilst in character. This involved the reading out of statements, if your character agreed you stood at one end, if they disagreed at the other. We used points from the manifesto for this and contentious views like 'young people should be seen and not heard'. Then you were asked to justify your opinion in relation to the statement whilst staying in character. This game established what it is to be the character and to look at things from their perspective. Next week we will finalise the manifesto ideas with votes from the young people.

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Monday Nov 03, 2008

Take One:Action!

I am now a veteran of any name game you care to mention, and have found they definitely work as ice breakers and of course to learn names, which I was rather rusty at… We also played games to discover favourite things that we have in common, and unsurprisingly pizza was a top choice..!

The young people in the group are enthusiastic and ready to learn, which is fantastic. Of the 10 that were supposed to turn up we got less than half, which is disappointing but apparently our group is the best attended of all the different volunteering groups including drama, photography and radio. I’m hoping that as the kids get more into it they’ll tell others and this will hopefully increase our numbers. In order to track the young people’s development, we asked them to mark on a chart their knowledge of film from ‘nothing’ to ‘a lot’, it will be great to watch the progression of this.

We then got the young people to go through different shots on the camera including a wide-shot, pan and close-up and when you might use different shots like these. They took to it very quickly, and were soon zooming up one another’s nostrils with aplomb…

To introduce the theme of the film, which will be youth justice, we got the group to watch extracts from ‘12 Angry Men’, a film about the criminal justice system in America. Victoria (one of the directors of the project) wasn’t sure how interested the young people would be in this, as it was a film from the 1950s in black and white. It follows 12 members of a jury as they deliberate over whether they can find a young man guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Along with the rest of the group I was desperate to know the conclusion but we were left on a cliff hanger – which I look forward to being resolved in the next session…

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Wednesday Oct 22, 2008

Aspire to get experience

Hi,

I'm Rhiannon and I have just graduated from university in English Literature and Classics, hugely vocational I know! So now I'm no longer a student, I'm going cold turkey on Hollyoaks and am trying to decide what to do with myself in the big bad world of work...  Currently I'm temping full time, but I've come to realise that regardless of your degree, whatever you want to do requires the magic word 'experience', luckily I've been able to negotiate some time off to volunteer.

I've decided to follow my interests, and hope this will develop into a career. Ideally I want to work in media and the arts combined with the voluntary sector. I've found a great project that mixes all three: for the next few months I'll be volunteering on a film project with school children from my local area, the Tower Hamlets. The scheme is run by Aspire through Toynbee Hall and it aims to impart new skills, but more importantly to raise the confidence and aspirations of the children involved. By the end of the program the film will be screened at the Brady Arts Centre. I'm really excited to be part of the project and am sure that I myself will learn plenty along the way. I hope you'll join me for the ups, downs and drama that is sure to follow...

Posted by Rhiannon ( 3:22 PM )
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