As the number of media professionals facing unexpected redundancy rises will the gap of experience between those who report on poverty and those who experience poverty decrease?
For more clips from our Poverty and The Media project please visit our Archive
To find out more information about our Poverty and The Media project please visit our Project Page
Sripriya Sudhakar (an architect from India) talks about urban design taking place in London in comparison to India. Sripriya expresses her views on; utopia, sustainability, social exclusion, poverty in London compared to India and lastly planning for a better London.
To watch the interview click below:
London Social Forum – Sripriya Sudhakar Interview
This is a free introductory training day in digital production sponsored by Skillset. As well as learning the basics of using and operating a camera in a workshop environment participants will get the opportunity to learn about Digital Apprenticeships in Creative Media from a Skillset advisor. This is an excellent opportunity for anyone looking to expand their horizons and learn more about video production as well as those interested in getting some careers advice on working in the media.
Places are limited, to avoid disappointment please email training@spectacle.co.uk or call 02072236677 as soon as possible to book your place. To keep regularly updated with all our activities please join our Facebook group.
Iain Sinclair, novelist and long standing Hackney resident has been banned from reading extracts of his new book in Hackney libraries because of his criticisms of the 2012 olympics. In an interview that was published in the Guardian, Sinclair describes the measures taken by Hackney council to stifle debate on the Olympic issue.
“I was asked to go along to Stoke Newington library to speak to 20 people: old hippies and local history buffs, probably. But I’d written an anti-Olympics piece in the London Review of Books, and so the Hackney thought police decided: no, we can’t have this person in our library. They lied about this all the way down the line, insisting it was nothing to do with the Olympics but that they can’t have ‘controversial’ topics discussed in libraries. Eventually someone from the Hackney Citizen used the Freedom of Information Act to get the transcript [of what was said in a meeting] and, sure enough, it came directly from the Mayor, Jules Pipe, saying that this person is anti-Olympics, and he doesn’t go into our libraries. So Hackney Council is my co-sponsor, really – and, of course, this manipulation [on the part of the council] is also a big theme of the book.”
For more information on Spectacles Olympic Project please visit our Project Page
For Spectacles latest film on the Olympics please visit our archive page.
Rich Kid, Poor Kid, The Secret Millionaire, The Tower and Repossession, Repossession, Repossession are all programs that centre around ‘poor’ areas and attempt to explore social inequality through individual stories.
What happens to the individuals or areas in these programs when the film makers leave?
What are the consequences of putting peoples personal circumstances on television?
For more clips from our Poverty and The Media project please visit our Archive
To find out more information about our Poverty and The Media project please visit our Project Page
Below is a short extract from one of Spectacle’s Poverty and the Media workshops on the Marsh Farm Estate. In this clip Glenn Jenkins, long-term community activist and part of Marsh Farm Out Reach, talks about the way television programs, such as Secret Millionaire, Big Brother and Jeremy Kyle, treat poorer people.
According to a newly published study by the Runnymede Trust, Who Cares about the White Working Class?, poverty is the biggest cause of discrimination against white working class people not race.
The report states “The white working classes are discriminated against on a range of different fronts, including their accent, their style, the food they eat, the clothes they wear, the social spaces they frequent, the post-code of their homes, possibly even their names. But they are not discriminated against because they are white,”.
The Guardian writes the report attacks middle class media commentators for simultaneously defending white working class interests against the false attack of politically correct multiculturalism whilst they simultaneously deride and ridicule the feckless and undeserving poor, who have squandered the opportunities offered by the welfare state.
The BBC’s The White Season and Channel 4’s Immigration-The Inconvenient Truth, come in for particular criticism. Of these programs the report says “The interests of the white working class are habitually pitched against those of minority ethnic groups and immigrants, while larger social and economic structures are left out of the debate altogether.”
Are the media really concerned with the white working class or are they just jumping on the scapegoating bandwagon?
Why do the media focus on race instead of class?
ITV’s new program Repossession, Repossession, Repossession focuses appropriately on people whose lives have been turned upside down by debt in the most dramatic fashion by the loss of their homes.
Following the lives of a family, a glamour model, a gambler and most interestingly Jamie an ambulance driver, it attempts to explain how these people got into a mountains of debt. Although the program lays some blame on banks and financial instituitions, it still focuses on individuals ‘spending sprees’ as the real reason their homes repossesed.
As Gary Hoffman, group vice-chairman of Barclays, rather checkily explains: “People binge eat, they binge drink, sometimes they spend, sometimes they binge borrow and what I encourage, what Barclays encourage, is for customers to talk to us when they have a problem.”
This from a man whose bank has lent millions pounds to those on low-comes and made a large fortune out credit card repayments.
The biggest question in this program should not be why are people are spending so much more than they earn? Or have people become too greedy? But why are public sectors workers like Jamie, who carry out essential services such as driving ambulances, earning so little they rely on debt to get by?
When will there be a program asking vice-chairs of Banks why they ran up so much debt they require billions of pounds of government bail outs?
Channel 4’s Cutting Edge documentary Rich kid, Poor Kid tells the story of two London teenages who live in the same street but inhabit different worlds. As the title suggests they are separated by great social and financial inequality one attending private school and one living in a council flat. A great deal of the narrative is structured around the girls living so geographically close together but does it really give an accurate picture of the local area or those who live in it?
Do you live in the Rich Kid, Poor kid area? Is it a realistic depiction of the way people interact?
Has the area you live in been in a documentary?
How was your area portrayed?
Spectacle has been commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to produce a DVD on Poverty and Participation in the Media. The DVD will be produced in Spectacle video workshop situations working with people with experience of poverty.
Media content will explore questions such as:
– How is UK poverty depicted in the media – TV, radio, press, online. What are good examples and what are not? Why?
– How would participants like to see their lives and situations depicted in the media? How could these be made into films and videos that will engage audiences?
– What are the stories about poverty that need to be told to a UK public that are not being told now? How could these be told engagingly? Why do these need to be told?
– How does it feel to share experiences of living on a low income to a journalist and/or on film?
– What might people worry about if asked to share their views on poverty in the media? How can their worries be reduced?
– What experience of new media do people have e.g. social networking sites, use of mobiles, blogging? What opportunities do these offer for telling the stories of life on a low income in the UK? Who would these reach?
If you are interested to participate in the workshops please use the Spectacle contact form or leave a comment here.
Co-Author this blog?
If you want to contribute to this blog on the subject of Poverty and the Media please contact Spectacle and we will register you as an editor or leave a comment.
