Chanice wins Jack Petchey Award!

Chanice Browne (age 13) won the Jack Petchey Award this term after great commitment to the project. She was voted in by her peers who said:

Great attendance, an understanding person, has loads of ideas, participated really well, used her voice well, good at using words and being descriptive, and took part in everything.

The award means she has £300 to spend on the project as she chooses. Previous winners were Bianca Dorsett and Ella Brown.

Here is Chanice at the premiere, and accepting her award!

PREMIERE A SUCCESS!

Over 45 people came to the premiere of 'Connect Cett4', our docu-drama on young people's relationships with the police.

It was great to see the young people introduce the film and some of them do speeches.

Hope everyone enjoyed it! Any comments, please add below!!!!

I will be uploading some of the speeches and comments from the young people over the next couple of weeks.

Connect Cett4 Premiere Coming Soon!

You are invited to the premiere of:

Connect Cett4


A docu-drama exploring young people’s views on policing.


Venue: Fawcett Community Hall, Fawcett Estate, Clapton Common, E5 9DQ
Date and time: Friday 12th December, 7pm – 9pm.

What’s happening?

· Introduction by young people from the Cett4 Film Project.

· Film screening: Connect Cett4.

· Award presentations.

· Free hot food, informal discussions with group members.

· Screening of ‘The Making Of Connect Cett4’.


Who is invited? Everyone who took part, family, friends, supporters and anyone interested!

For more information ring Tania on 07872 675569.

This project was developed by the Fawcett Youth Committee, co-ordinated by Elevate and supported by Kaspar Films, Cityzen and Hackney Youth Support Team.

Special thanks to Fawcett Tenants and Residents Association, Pinnacle, Hackney Youth Opportunity Fund, RSA London Region, Hackney Homes, Hackney Music Development Trust, the members’ parents and carers, and everyone else who supported the project.

Cett4 in the news?

The film project is partly funded by the Youth Opportunity Fund, and last week a photographer came to capture images of young people's projects. This photo of the Cett4 film group has ended up on the Metro newspaper website at:

http://img.metro.co.uk/3rdparty/19under19/getinvolved.html?smicro=1&clie

We have heard the group may also feature in the Metro paper itself so keep your eyes out...

Chanice's Story

I was involved in the other project, H-town or Outtatown. I’m a very committed person and come nearly every week. We are now doing another project based on young people and police. We thought of the idea by our different experiences with the police, we also wanted to show people our different views about them. We started off with meetings then put out different funding applications. We got money off the RSA and then got money off the Youth opportunity funds.

We interviewed different people from all age groups and acted out a specific scene of our experience. We edited and produced a docudrama. Many people had a lot of different views and strong points. We also interviewed some police. We wrote the scripts and acted out the scenes. We tried our hardest to bring out the best of our ability and hopefully will be better than our first project. We hope you will see it when it’s finished and hopefully get a good response back.

Jenine's Story

I was involved in out first film H-Town or Outatown. I was the assistant director. After we finished that film, we enjoyed it so much that we applied for some money to do another film project. This time we wanted it to be a docudrama about Police and youths. My role has been providing refreshments for the group. We got given a certain amount of money to buy snacks. I enjoyed this project very much and I hope that this is continued…
By Jenine <3 x

Lydia's Story

I was the wonderful Alice Nicholas’s replacement and was responsible for the drama development within the film project.
Although highly stressful, it has been an exciting journey with an amazing outcome.
The young people had really good ideas and worked hard to achieve a piece that reflected their views and the views of others.
I hope they are as proud as I am of their achievements and I hope they continue to work hard in all aspects of their lives because, when they put their minds to it they really do produce work of a high standard.

Daniel's Story

I found out about this film project from other people and posters around my area. I knew I should come because I knew it will be fun and keep me and my friends off the streets. The project has been a great success because we have had a lot of different people from different boroughs coming and learning new things about filming.

People experiences with the police I think is bad because most people are in big crews and most people follow the crowds and their friends.

Ismael's Story

I am a detached youth worker who has been working in Hackney for three years.
It has been very interesting to listen to many perspectives on the relationship between the young people and the police.

It was also interesting to see some parents and young people coming together and giving their views on the subject.

As result of this docudrama, I would like to see young people being treated with respect that every human being deserves. I also think is extremely important that the young people don’t get criminalised.

Adelaide's Story

The reason of this film project is to get young people united. We wanted to find out the views and feelings of young people about the police. The aim of this film is to investigate how relations between young people and the police can be improved. Our objective is for the police to know people’s views about them.

We as a group went to other youth projects around London such as Kilburn and Poplar to investigate their views about what we were doing in our community about the police. We asked them what their relationship with the police was all about.

To be continued…

Negative? Positive?

The film is nearly finished! Some of the group will be editing this Saturday, and others are involved in designing a poster and flyer for the film 'Premiere' in their community hall. (They hope to show the film in a local cinema early next year).

In designing a poster they been thinking about what images to use. For example, the pictures below, taken during filming the fictional scenes - are they positive? Negative? What do these words mean anyway? The same words and pictures can mean different things to different people.

What do you think?

New photos

Words from far away...

We want to involve all the young people on the estate who want to get involved in this film, even if they don't want to - or can't - actually be in the film.

One of the young people who was very involved in organising and acting in the last film is currently on remand in prison. We wanted to keep him involved and he has been writing contributions for use in the current project.

He has written three pieces so far, which the young people in the group are using as part of the script. Here is his most recent contribution:

When in prison the best thing to do is to keep your head down, don’t get involved in any fights or don’t get on the bad side of the officers. Try to get involved with work and education, always go to the library and gym, do all the courses that get offered to you. Be good behaved and try to get on enhanced level which is a level where you can get playstation, more visits, more money and time will go easier.

If someone starts trouble walk away but if it gets too much make sure you stand your ground because the last thing you need is to be known as a victim. But my advise is to keep your head down and keep yourself to yourself.

Police:

The police is going hard on all kinds of stuff, from drugs to weapons to assaults. But what they don’t understand is that where we grow up some people get involved because they grow up into stuff like this, and all they do is send people to prison which just makes them more violent.

It would be interesting to know people's responses to this piece of writing, and to the idea of involving him in the project even though he is in prison, so add your comment below!

No stereotypes thanks?!?

This week's session was focusing on the fictional scenes, developing ideas for a script for the filming which will take place in half term.

This is led by our great drama facilitator Lydia, who got everyone up on their feet improvising, and also led discussions about what happens in each scene. By the end of the session we all had a much clearer idea about the plot, which is basically about what happens after a crime takes place - how the police treat the young people in the local area, and how the young people respond.

One key thing we are all clear about is that we don't see the perpetrators in the film; we are thinking of ways to show a mugging without portraying any of our group members in a stereotypically negative way. The young people also want to explain on the film why they made this decision.

It's hard to make a film (especially a short one) without stereotypes, especially when we want to show reality - but we are giving it a try!

planning and evaluating

One of the nicest things about tonight's session (as well as the great acting / improvising - nice one guys!) was how enthusiastically the young people got involved in the evaluation at the end.

It's common on youth projects for workers to meet and evaluate for quarter of an hour after each session. At the start of this project us workers felt we had not given enough time to group evaluation in the past, and we decided to commit to half an hour each week. We also decided to invite young people to take part as equal members of the team.

Tonight 5 young people and 3 workers huddled in a corner of the cold room, giving feedback on good and bad things about the session, and planning the next session. I liked the way we all talked about good and bad things and were honest with each other, as if it was just a workers' meeting. Especially I liked the way people kept taking next week's session plan from each other, adding to it and writing their names against the jobs!

What we wrote down doesn't really capture the whole discussion... esp. how much we talk about what food to get for the next session, who's going to get it and how much they should spend! Also, don't get the idea everyone is sitting around politely, there's all sorts of phones going off and random conversations / gossip - but honestly, is this any different to most staff evaluations?!

So far I think it's a good idea, explicitly involving the group in responsibility for the smooth running of the sessions. It varies, but that's cool... sometimes the whole group gets involved and other times not even all the workers can stay... tonight was a good one!

What do you think!?! Add a comment!!! You don't have to write as much as me, ha ha!

Hello and welcome!

Hi!
The Cett4 blog is about an exciting film project in Hackney. A group of young people wanted to make a film about life on their estate, and so far they have finished their first film and started work on their second.

The first film was called 'H-Town or Outtatown' and was a great success (more later!). The second one doesn't have a name yet, it's a docu-drama about police relationships with young people. The aim is that the film project is led as much as possible by the young people in the group.

My name's Tania, I'm a detached youth worker, and I have known this group of young people nearly a year. It's the first blog I've done so I'm not sure how it will turn out! I'm not the only adult in the project: at different times there are two drama workers, two other youth workers, and a film maker also involved, and then managers and funders in the background. Most important are all the young people who take part.

If you are involved in the project in any way, or if you are just interested, get in touch with any ideas and suggestions. And most of all, post your comments!!!

Thanks! Tania :-)