Giving women a voice

I've been freelance producing for IJP for three years now. I love the fact that on every job I'm plunged into scenarios which are fascinating, eye-opening and often quite bizarre. On a dark rainy Wednesday evening last week, I was shown down to the basement of Albany Street Police Station in north London and led into the cells where 5 police officers were waiting to be interviewed, by me. It was late, stiflingly airless, and totally surreal to be directing police custody sergeants from the side of the desk where if I'd had a different kind of life, I might be standing handcuffed, answering questions, rather than asking them. 

I just thought - wow, here I am, talking directly to police on the front line about the way they deal with the most vulnerable women in society. They had all just come off long shifts to be filmed for a DVD, which will help to raise awareness of the issues faced by female offenders.

The DVD was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice in response to Baroness Corston's report for the Government on the treatment of women in the Criminal Justice System. At the beginning of the project, we filmed an interview with her at the House of Lords. She cried as she talked about some of the women she had met in prison, and the stories they had told her about their lives. I've also felt very emotional whilst making this film. Some of the women that we met at Anawim Women's Centre in Birmingham told us things that I could hardly believe still happen in Britain today. They bravely lifted the lid on traumatic experiences to talk to us on camera, and in doing so they will have an important impact on how Police, Probation officers, Judges and Magistrates will handle cases in the future.

This type of commission pushes the envelope of film as a communication tool. The Ministry of Justice won't just use the DVD as part of a new training programme for staff. It will also be distributed to government departments, agencies and policy makers, bringing the lives of the women who spoke to me and the experiences of the staff working with them directly to the heart of national debate about policy and practice in the Criminal Justice System.

Heidi Perry, Producer/Director, Inside Job Productions

Cracking Up

Sometimes researching a new film project can be fun. So a trip to The Hob pub in Forest Hill to see John Ryan, a London/Irish comedian, do a show seemed an inviting prospect. Then it turned out the show was all about mental health. Depression. Suicide. Light-hearted stuff really.

A mix of comedy, sketches and poetry founded on research and contributions from people who have experienced mental health difficulties, Cracking Up aims to 'lift the lid on mental health', encourage people to be more 'open to talking about and seeking help if they experience symptoms' and 'help reduce stigma by normalising mental health problems'.

Actually, to the credit of John, fellow performers and the show's producer Maya Twardzicki, a psychologist working with mental health services in Surrey, Cracking Up turned out to be very funny. Aimed predominantly at men, who find it harder to talk about mental health and to seek help for mental health problems, Twardzicki decided that comedy was going to be the perfect way of engaging audiences with issues, and recruited Ryan, who's already done one successful show on men's health called Hurt Till It Laughs.

In preparation for Cracking Up, discussion sessions were run with different demographic groups of men around Surrey to inform the development of the comedy and sketch scripts. Sixty men took part from around the county including firemen, construction students, long term unemployed and users of mental health services. So far the show has been shown to over 600 people across Surrey and London, and now has two dates for shows in April at the Soho Theatre.

This imaginative approach to raising awareness of mental health issues caught the eye of an organisation called the Southside Partnership, who work with offenders. They asked whether IJP would be interested in helping them, Maya and John to deliver a similar kind of project involving offenders. That's how I ended up in Forest Hill, listening to comedian Gareth Berliner describe his suicide attempt in great detail. And laughing.

Do go to the show if you're interested. And we'll keep you posted on our project with the Southside Partnership.

Naomi Delap, Managing Director, Inside Job Productions

Through the brothel keyhole...

This week a group of us from IJP paid a visit to the Himalaya Film & Cultural Festival to watch a short film called "From Brothel to Bridehood". The documentary, set in Mumbai, follows the work of the Rescue Foundation, an NGO that works for the rescue, rehabilitation and repatriation of victims of human trafficking from India, Nepal and Bangladesh who have been sold for forced prostitution.

Established in the year 2000, the Rescue Foundation rescues women from the brothels of Mumbai and cares for them in one of their three homes providing them with health care, counselling, training, confidence building activities, and where appropriate facilitating arranged marriages to provide them with security and a traditional family way of life.

The film was followed by a short presentation and Q&A from Triveni Acharya, the inspiration and founder of the Rescue Foundation.  The largest organisation of its kind, the NGO rescues more than 300 girls annually, providing them with an escape from a life of exploitation.

Seeing the film drew interesting parallels to the issues IJP works with across many of our films because, as shocking as it may seem, these sorts of problems also exist in the UK.

Many of our past and previous projects have involved communicating the work of organisations which mirror the achievements of the Rescue Foundation in Mumbai. We’re in the middle of filming an IJP commission for NOMS Women’s Team addressing issues faced by women on the cusp of offending. Over the past few weeks I’ve heard interviewees in Birmingham talking about similar problems where from an early age women are drawn into a life of prostitution, drug addiction and domestic violence.

'From Brothel to Bridehood' clearly communicated the impact of the Rescue Foundation's work to deal with the above issues, from the girls' withdrawn young faces when they were rescued to their playful smiles and laughter when dancing.  As a film production company working extensively with social issues, it reinforced the power of film to capture, in a very short space of time, something which couldn't be achieved by words alone.

Ann Summerhayes, Production Co-ordinator, Inside Job Productions

Media as a tool against prejudice

More than one third of adults admit to being prejudiced against Travellers/Gypsies, with such prejudices being frequently reinforced by mainstream media. Before Savvy Chavvy, access to the technological skills and equipment to challenge this representation and express and reinforce a sense of community within traditional media was limited. However, in the form of a unique social networking site, the development of Savvy Chavvy gave young members of this often misrepresented and marginalised community the opportunity to take control of how they are perceived.

Traditionally creating audio and video had been a relatively expensive and complicated process and, crucially, distribution rested with mainstream media outlets. However, the advent of relatively inexpensive and easy to use digital video and audio hardware combined with online platforms such as YouTube and Current TV has created exciting possibilities for communities and individuals to represent themselves, set the agenda and challenge prejudices. For communities such as the Gypsy Roma Traveller community whose portrayal in mainstream media is frequently misinformed or prejudicial, this freedom is nothing short of groundbreaking.

It was suprising how comfortable the young people were with the digital camcorders, audio recorders and editing software and within half a day they were shooting, cutting and up-loading their own work. However, what was even more striking was the clear editorial voice the young people had, each showed a very strong idea of what they wanted to say about themselves, their lives and their community. The result was a series of films and audio work that was powerful, emotive and a real alternative to the portrayal of their community that exists in the mainstream.

The young people involved in the training and all those accessing savvychavvy.com have shown increased confidence, greater pride in their cultural identity and decreased feelings of isolation. Rather than passively using the web, Savvy Chavvy members now view web 2.0 technologies as tools for self and cultural expression and can access a network of like minded individuals to discuss issues of real significance to their lives.

Christy McAleese, Savvy Chavvy Project, Media For Development

Rex Quondam, Rexque Futurus

I recently went to a lecture given by Rex Bloomstein, a documentary maker who’s been filming in and around the criminal justice system since the 1970’s. Organised by the Prisoner’s Education Trust, the event gave a fascinating insight into the enormous changes that have happened in the prison estate over four decades and the way that film has been used to capture, and in Bloomstein’s case, influence that process.

Clips from early films such as ‘The Sentence’, (1975) ‘Release’, (1976) ‘Prisoners’ Wives’, (1977) ‘Parole’, (1978) ‘Lifer’ (1982) and ‘Strangeways’ (1980) showed a system where prisoners still slopped out every morning, adjudications happened behind closed doors and there was widespread concern about the rising prison numbers. The prison population hit 40,000 for the first time in the early 70’s (compared to today’s figure of over 80,000), causing a huge debate about how prisons were run and a desire to open the system to scrutiny to an extent which actually allowed Bloomstein unprecedented access to prisons like Strangeways.

The films gave fascinating portraits of individuals: the wife of a serial criminal sent down yet again; the lifer who’d been in care most of his life who had no intention of submitting to the system at awful cost to his quality of life in prison – revisited again thirty years later in another film in terrible health but somehow finally at peace with himself; and the transvestite lifer who told the story of how he’d found himself in the middle of a police siege – at the beginning of the night demanding a million pounds and a helicopter, and at the end, a bottle of Pernod...

Bloomstein’s style is laconic, slow-moving, allowing the situations to unfold and subjects to speak for themselves. At the same time, he asks pointed questions in voice-over – why does so much happen behind closed doors? When will it change? And his questions prompted further questions, and sometimes answers. His films showed the public a hidden world and had a direct effect. At the end of the talk a member of the audience stood up to comment: it was Martin Narey, former head of the prison service and now Chief Executive of children’s charity Barnadoes. Narey had watched Bloomstein’s film about Strangeways and had been inspired to join the prison service as a result.

Bloomstein is still making films addressing fundamentally important subjects: the Holocaust (KZ 2005) , freedom of expression (An Independent Mind 2008) and the criminal justice system – he made a film about children in prison in 2005. He talked about the need to keep making his films simply and with integrity – moving in the opposite direction to the majority of factual programming on TV today. At the same time, the filming environment has changed, although with his track record Bloomstein has more clout than most. Compliance, the spectre haunting TV in the noughties and presumably the decade to come, means the filming process has changed radically and film-makers are much less able to film opportunistically and spontaneously.

Still, as we move into a new decade, Bloomstein’s classic, thoughtful films are a beacon of light in a sea of formatted drivel. Proof that film-making can still be powerful, influential, affecting.

Naomi Delap, Managing Director, Inside Job Productions

Only hackers can judge hackers

And only a hacker can know a hackers' worth. We might not know it but looking back at the history of the early internet we actually inherited a valuable change in attitude from the early geeks and the dynamic they established in their usenet newsgroups!

A long time before the graphical browsers came along they needed a way to freely share knowledge. They did so by sending emails to all members of a group, which was a great way to get feedback and join efforts. Together they developed a creative and collaborative practice, in their area of technological interest. This method of peer-to-peer knowledge exchange, production and distribution is today being applied in all sorts of areas, online and in the real world.

The attitude we inherited is that we as 'consumers' or 'users' now turn to our peers or people in the same boat as us, for advice on what to do and where to go. You shop for a camera, you check reviews by other people who have bought it before. You have a software problem, you search for other users who have had the same issues – and hopefully solved them. Experts don't always get it right, nor do they always agree with each other. This kind of gives everybody the right to chip in and the internet makes this possible. Twenty people sharing their subjective and contradictive views on a certain issue can now have the information edge over an expert. People are increasingly making informed decisions based on the experiences of their peers rather than simply being told what to do.

Often it's easier to accept support, advice and real life examples from somebody who has gone through the same experience themselves. I’m not saying you can replace experts, but in many cases they can be complemented.

Earlier this month we launched freeasabird.org.uk, a peer-support network for women coming out of the Criminal Justice System. Like most peer-to-peer projects, the community has shaped the network, and takes the lead in producing the content and managing the site. The focus of freeasabird is on sharing real life examples of how women ex-offenders have got back on their feet, whether it’s sorting out housing, getting new qualifications or finding a job. People coming for advice or help can choose to take on board the opinions of others or not. Of course not everybody will have had the same experience, but users will share enough to be able to learn from each other. And we hope they will be inspired and motivated by other people’s’ stories to move their lives forward. As a model, peer-projects have gone a long way and have an even longer way to go. Technologies come and go, companies and software applications come and go, but the principal of peer-to-peer exchange as a tool to empower communities is clearly here to stay.

Caspar Below, Freeasabird Project Manager, Media For Development

IJP's income is used to develop various MFD projects, including Freeasabird.


Watch this space to hear about how we continue to explore this model of mutual aid to build communities that can help themselves. Visit freeasabird for advice, stories and films for and by women offenders. Books: Cyberchiefs, Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes. Mathieu O’Neill.

Bridging the development gap

Almost exactly seven years ago - just before Christmas 2002 - I was sitting in a classroom at Wandsworth Prison discussing a new project idea with a small group of prisoners. We were thinking about setting up a radio station inside the prison, complete with a learning facility, with the idea that radio might be an excellent hook for encouraging prisoners to get involved in education for the first time. Setting up a new project takes time, patience and money and we suspected that anything inside a prison would draw heavily on all of these. Sure enough, it was eighteen months later when Radio Wanno was opened by Cherie Booth as a unique new learning and broadcast facility at Wandsworth Prison - and by then we had all come up against the numerous challenges of working inside a prison.the idea being discussed casually over a coffee and the project launch?

What the development of Radio Wanno also demonstrated to us was one of the biggest challenges that any entrepreneurial organisation coming up with bright new ideas has to contend with: who wants to pay for that crucial period of time between - which in the case of Radio Wanno was eighteen months. It's an especially big question for us at Media for Development (MFD), where we're in the business of coming up with fresh ideas of how different media can be used to change people's lives, for the better. And so that's where IJP comes in: our idea was to establish an income-generating arm of MFD that would help cover our project development costs. This bridge between a great idea and it's realisation, means projects can be developed and get off the ground. It's only three years since the launch of IJP and already Naomi and her dynamic team are supporting us in that objective, as well as having their own clearly defined vision of making great films which help other organisations achieve their social objectives.

Things have moved on in a big way at MFD since the launch of Radio Wanno - we've now worked in over 30 prisons around England and next year we'll start new media-based initiatives in other parts of the criminal justice system both here and in the UK, as well as internationally. So if you're reading this as someone who's commissioned a film from IJP or you've been on one of the IJP production teams, thanks for the contribution!

James Greenshields, CEO, Media for Development

To see other projects for which IJP has funded the development, visit the IJP website

Radio Wanno has won 3 Koestler Awards for production, with 79% of it's students going on to achieve NCFE accreditation. "Radio Wanno has educated me in computer and studio skills, it's given me confidence to speak in front of others, but most importantly it has given me a way out of crime' - NCFE graduate

Phones can be more scary than you think!

It's a pretty extreme way to sort your life out but, for me, going to prison allowed me to do just that. Really. Of course, the simple daily grind and routine, slamming doors, jangling keys and shouts of 'Get your hot water ladieeeeeeeeees' probably wouldn't be enough for anyone to turn the corner but mine was a sentence laden with opportunity; opportunity I seized with great relish.

It started with a course (sorry if a song just popped into your head), a BTEC in digital media. If I say so myself I did very well, getting an overall distinction and a massive boost to my confidence and self-esteem. And that led to the ultimate prize, a placement with IJP as their first ever Production Assistant, commuting daily from prison to their offices in London. An actual job! Like a normal person!

Obviously getting the job wasn't as simple as just doing well on the course and I'm not sure that was even a factor. The application process was like that of any job including an interview at which I was more than a little nervous. But I got through it and thanks to that and some serendipitous timing regarding eligibility for licenced release the first placement was mine. I'd have loved a glass of champers to celebrate but I was in prison so I had a cup of tea. Closely followed by another one. And then maybe one more. I do like tea.

The job itself was completely different from anything I'd ever done before. It wasn't mind-numbingly dull for a start. Every day offered me a new challenge, new people to meet, new things to arrange, the odd article to write. Before I hadn't even known I could write.

There were challenges I probably felt at the time I could have done without, for example approaching Monty Don and Grayson Perry with invitations for the company launch. They looked at me as though I was mad. Maybe it was my manic fixed grin? While in prison I had also inexplicably developed a phobia of using the telephone and looked for more creative ways of avoiding it ('No really, their preferred method of communication is morse code/semaphore/beacon lighting'), and I gave a speech at a conference which was the single most fear-inducing experience of my life, worse even than my trial (which was no picnic). I was rubbish too. I'd written it before I got there and simply read it out without looking up once.

Although I felt it was disastrous it hasn't stopped me from doing it since (similarly with me never looking up) and I have IJP to thank that I now have the confidence to put myself in that position despite being useless at it. Strangely enough the phone hasn't been ringing off the hook with offers of engagement as an after-dinner speaker. Just as well as I probably wouldn't answer the phone anyway.

Fiona writes a successful blog and is currently working on a book for publication. Prior to her placement at IJP Fiona completed her studies at the Media House, a project managed by Media for Development, IJP's founder organisation which runs various projects using media as a tool to re-engage and empower isolated communities.

Saturday Night at Secret Cinema

As we get closer to Old St tube station the people in white multiply. We stream towards the venue past long lines of people putting on decontamination suits bearing the legend 'Nostromo'. Joining our place in the queue we pass a window where a group of astronauts argue around a table. We finally enter the building through a vibrating airlock...

It all started when I received an email from Secret Cinema, London's latest pop-up happening for cinephiles. Sign up to the website and Secret Cinema will eventually invite you to the next screening - film to be revealed and venue to be announced. All you know is that it'll happen on a certain date somewhere in London.

We emerge in a huge concrete space foaming with dry ice and filled with over a thousand people in their white hooded suits. A disembodied head sits in the corner of the bar and an alien form slithers round the stairwell. We sit in front of a huge screen clutching our popcorn and a glass of wine, and the lights go down...

There's a lot to be said for the power of anticipation. I lost count of the number of emails I exchanged with my sister speculating on which film we were going to see. As it turned out neither of us got it right, despite the very obvious hints (well done, movie buffs, Nostromo is the space ship in Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Alien).

The lights come up again. "That was brilliant!" enthuses my sister. We hang around a bit listening to a DJ mixing alien beats live (even worse than it sounds) and then head off to a nearby bar for a drink where, to be fair, they don't bat an eyelid at our decontamination suits.

I think it's a love it or hate it type of event, but if you like a bit of intrigue and are excited by the idea of dressing up...Secret Cinema could be your next big night out.

Naomi Delap, Managing Director, Inside Job Productions

Empowering magistrates through film

When I was asked by IJP to make a film for London Probation to give magistrates an in-depth understanding of what happened to people serving community sentences I felt excited, if slightly daunted by the vast scope of issues the film could cover. One magistrate told me he sees the same people in court time and time again and wanted to know why, and what measures could change this. Another said that understanding the kinds of day-to-day issues many offenders are struggling with would help him sentence more appropriately.

We decided to focus on the stories of three individuals undertaking different intervention programmes as part of their sentence plan. The Women's Programme is a 3-month intensive couse aiming to build self-esteem, assertiveness and life skills to prevent re-offending. Lots of the women have difficulties saying 'no' to their partners or kids, and end up living outside their means and resorting to crime. They work on thinking more positively about themselves, the goals they want to achieve and how to manage bills and money. The women we met felt the course had given them the tools they needed to change their future.

The 9-month Domestic Abuse Programme was quite an eye-opener. It's not just about physical violence, but about all the other nuances of power play in personal relationships. The man we filmed was still together with his partner and child. His partner said he had really changed since doing the programme - he understood her needs better; listened more; and differences were now being resolved through talking rather than escalating into full-blown rows and fights.

Our final contributor was someone who's spent most of his adult life in and out of prison. Currently on a methodone prescription, he was attempting to break his heroin addiction and cut down on drinking. He was under intensive supervision and had daily appointments with different agencies. He told us that in the chaos of his life this structure was what kept him feeling safe. I hope the short amount of filming we did with him will help give magistrates a better understanding of the deeply-rooted, complex issues in people's lives that can lead them to keep re-offending. And that many need multiple interventions and different kinds of support before change really starts to happen.

Rosa Rogers, Producer/Director, Inside Job Productions