A micro-history of Britain is unfolding at Raven Row. But this isn’t the history of kings and wars and empires. This is the history of the people, told by the people.
The endless screens of the newly reopened Raven Row are showing videos by the BBC’s Community Programme Unit, a division of Auntie dedicated to allowing everyday folk to make films about the issues that mattered to them. It closed in 2004, but before that it racked up hundreds of films by hundreds of people, giving the good taxpaying citizens of the UK budgets, editorial freedom and a film crew to tell their stories. It’s like American cable-access TV, but in Scunthorpe.
It’s all captured on grim, grainy, grey film; it’s brutally nostalgic, intensely transportive. It starts with the CPU’s earliest work in the 1970s. There’s a play about the struggle for employment benefits, a debate about pelican crossings, a documentary about builders from Skelmersdale helping rebuild an earthquake-ravaged Italian town. There are films by the National Unions of the deaf, the Merseyside Chinese community, the Campaign Against Racism in the Media. There are comedy shows, punk zines, musical performances. It’s staggering, incredible, a beautiful window into the communities of 1970s Britain, their struggles, passions, battles, beliefs. These are the people who cared, and you can tell.
For more information visit: https://www.timeout.com/london/art/people-make-television
Thomas L. Blair is a sociologist and political blogger on the Chronicleworld 'for creative renewal in Black Britain and Afro-Europe'. His work is honoured in the British Library's archive of "social, historic and culturally significant web-based material from the UK domain". He won top prize in the blogging competition on The-Latest.
Sumantra Maitra is a freelance journalist from Mumbai, India. He is a correspondent for All Sports magazine, and a foreign affairs blogger for the Washington Examiner. He has written articles for news website Merinews.com and other regional publications. Sumantra runs a blog at DailyWorldWatch.wordpress.com. He provided exclusive eyewitness reports for The-Latest on the Mumbai bombings of 2008.
Brian Usher is photography consultant for The-Latest.Com. He is a highly experienced editorial and commercial photographer whose work has been published throughout the world, appearing in many well known magazines and newspapers. Brian has featured in several books and has been a writer for the Royal Photographic Society magazine.
Heidi Kingstone has spent time in Afghanistan reporting for a number of publications. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Spectator, The Sunday Times and other international journals. She has also reported from places like Iraq, Rwanda, Lebanon, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya. Heidi is The-Latest's Editor at large.
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