Living Lens

Transforming Steps

2012-02-08T13:44:00.003Z

Rose has returned from her trip to India, where she was working with Kolkata Sanved and Sadlers Wells choreographer Mafalda Deville. To read more about her trip please visit the Transforming Steps blog.
Click here to see a clip of the dance team in rehearsal.
The piece they're developing will be performed at Sadler's Wells, London on 22 & 23 March 2012 to raise awareness of the global problem of human trafficking. There is still an opportunity to contribute towards this ground-breaking project - there are currently funds to see four of the seven women from India come to London, we need to raise funds to ensure the remaining three women can join them. Make a difference, donate at http://www.indiegogo.com/Transforming-Steps

Volunteer post available 0.5 - 1 day per week

2011-09-28T14:05:00.004+01:00

Living Lens are looking for an intern to join us in our sunny office in Candid Arts, Angel Islington. The role is a voluntary role (travel expenses will be paid), 0.5 - 1 day per week and would be carrying out tasks connected with Living Lens finances and maintaining records.

Deadline for application is 14 Oct.

Specific tasks for the book-keeper will include:

Maintaining purchase ledger including recording and preparing creditor payments for sign off by the Finance Director;
Maintaining sales ledger and credit control function, including raising supplier invoices;
Working with the Finance Director to produce monthly financial reports for the Directors and Trustees – income and expenditure accounts, cashflow projections, etc;
Assisting the Living Lens directors in production of periodic and ad hoc budget reports in line with funders’ monitoring requirements and for grant applications.

The Book-keeper will report to the Directors of Living Lens and will also have contact with other members of the Living Lens team. Living Lens, as any small organisation, does not have rigidly defined boundaries to each post and the Book-keeper will be expected to carry out other duties as required.

Living Lens is a small and friendly yet hard-working and fast-moving team. We are at an early stage of development and therefore the post carries a lot of responsibility. The ideal person to fill this role will have the following attributes:

Sympathy with the aims of Living Lens (see below);
Numerate and trust-worthy;
Good knowledge of the Microsoft office suite, in particular Excel;
Experience of preparing financial reports;
An eye for detail;
Self-motivation and ability to work as a team.

In appointing staff and volunteers, as in recruiting participants, Living Lens does not discriminate on grounds of race, gender, age, religious beliefs, disability or sexual orientation.

Living Lens values:

Contribution: knowing everyone can contribute
Adventure: exploring new opportunities
Passion: igniting the creative drive
Durability: what matters endures.

Contact Amy: Tel: 020 7278 5027 E: amy@livinglens.co.uk

Kolkata Sanved and Living Lens Collaboration

2011-03-30T13:11:00.003+01:00

Last week we had the pleasure of hosting Sohini Chakraborty, founder of Sanved. We met Sohini in India in November 2009 on a trip we were lucky enough to be awarded through UnLtd & Journeys For Change and Rose and Sohini have been finding ways of collaborating ever since. Sohini uses dance therapy movement with survivors of trafficking. Our methodologies are similar and it seemed clear that they could work very powerfully together. Our collaborative project is now officially launched and our aim is to use the Olympics as an opportunity to raise awareness of sex trafficking, while the eyes of the world are on the UK. Evidence suggests that there has been an increase in the trafficking of women into the UK in order to ‘service’ the construction workers building the Olympic village. Police and NGOs say that this will continue with the arrival of tourists for the Games themselves, and then once the games are over, there is the question of what will happen to these women. We will be working with survivors of trafficking to produce a dance and video performance, which will be performed at venues around London.

You can support this project by visiting the page we have created on Buzzbnk. Here you can register your support and receive updates on the progress of the project and you can make a donation towards the project. We are looking to raise £5,000 over the next 2 months to pay for equipment and to cover essential international travel to promote the project. Please click on the Buzzbnk link and register your support and send the link to your networks so we can ensure that the voice of victims of trafficking are heard during this high profile sporting event.

Next Steps 2011

2011-03-02T11:37:00.003Z

The Next Steps project is now in it's second year. As I mentioned in the last Next Steps blog, we have created a social media network for all partners with the help of Nathalie from On Road Media. The purpose of the site is to exchange ideas, information and expertise about the Next Steps project and about the wider field of human trafficking prevention. The partners decided that the site needs to be closed and so it isn't accessible to the public. If you work in this field and feel the network may contribute to your work click here to apply.

Rose and Keren (one of our senior facilitators) have been carrying out workshops to produce footage for the DVD. These are Rose's thoughts on their progress so far:

"Knowing that our strength lies in drawing out personal experience, we were clear that we weren’t going to produce an informative DVD, explaining every step of the witness process – with all the variables witnesses face this would have ended up being a very complex DVD! Instead we honed in on two key themes that seemed to be relevant to any woman standing as a witness, whatever her previous and on-going experience – the first is managing expections and the second is looking after yourself.

We shot the footage with a group of project partners from UKBA, UKHTC/SOCA, SCD9, the Poppy Project and CPS. Our challenge was how to generate images to go with their excellent interviews. We had fun thinking of creative ways of doing this, and engaging the partners in unexpected activities – sometimes ending in total hilarity – not what we were expecting from such a professional group!

We also worked with a group of women from the Poppy Project, some of whom shared their stories, while others took part in video workshops to generate images to accompany the stories. And through Sue at Soca we were also able to interview a woman who had relevant experience."

Over the next 6 months we will be editing the footage and getting approval from partners on the content and design of the D VD.

Happy New year!

2011-02-01T13:51:00.003Z

Albeit one month in. I am just back from maternity leave and cranking up for 2011. Rose has been busy busy busy along with Keren working on the Next Steps project (see blog earlier) and the Islington Hubs project. We will blog on their progress in the next few days. It's been exciting having another baby and taking 6 months to be at home with the wee boy - but it's also a delight to be back and a part of the passion and challenges that Living Lens is. I intend to blog more regularly as a form of communication, but also exploration. Please let me know if there's anything you'd like me to blog on about!
amy

2010-06-28T12:47:00.010+01:00

Kolkata Sanved Collaboration
We're delighted to announce that our collaboration with Kolkata Sanved is still in development. Our vision is to work together, using video and dance, drawing together our experience and learning from each others' skills.

The latest news on this project is that Saddlers Wells hope to fund Sohini (founder of Kolkata Sanved) to come over in March. We'd like to build some shared work into her time here and are looking for ways of making that possible.

We're also keen to make Sohini's time in London as fruitful as possible, so if you're interested in meeting with her or working with her during this period, please get in touch.

2010-06-28T12:30:00.003+01:00

Stand With Us Update
At the beginning of the year we were working with child domestic workers in India, Togo and Peru. They made a video for the International Labour Organisation who are developing a new convention on domestic work - but haven't included anything about young domestic workers.
Fiamma, Eyelyn, Komi, Foulera and Sajatha have been at the International Labour Convention in Geneva - find out how they got on and watch their video

Next Steps

2010-05-21T15:04:00.006+01:00

Our Next Steps project is well and truly under way. Just a reminder: this is our Comic Relief funded project taking place over the next two-years. It sees us working in partnership with the London Metropolitan Police Service and the POPPY Project to produce a DVD resource for women who have been trafficked into forced prostitution. The DVD will explore the issue of giving evidence in court with the aim of increasing conviction rates of traffickers whilst safeguarding the women. In the second year of the project we will work in partnership with the UK Human Trafficking Centre, Anti-Slavery International, the Crown Prosecution Service and the UK Border Agency to disseminate the DVD nationally and to train groups in its use.

So far we've met with our key partners who are all on board and ready to join us at the launch of the project which will take place at Lovells, who've kindly given us a space for free, on 11 June.

We've also set up a social media network for the project team and key partners. We hope to open it up to all stakeholders, however, this is still under debate as we are considering security and privacy issues. The purpose of the network is to open up a dialogue between members and build up a space of collective expertise. We really believe that in developing a critical mass of people in the sector who work in partnership and communicate across professional divides, we are putting the project in a far stronger position to make a real difference.

Workshops with the women, police, UKBA staff and others will begin in July these will be led by Rose and co-facilitated with Keren our facilitator whose worked on many other projects with us.

So far I've been project managing, but as some of you may know, I'm off on maternity leave at the beginning of July and so will hand over the project management to our partnership coordinator and long time co-facilitator Katherine Mann.

We'll keep you posted as the project develops.

Amy

2010-03-31T10:36:00.002+01:00

Anna Colom is a journalist and filmmaker who we met at EsoDoc. She has an MSc in Development Studies from SOAS and has written a fascinating thesis on participatory video. Here are her thoughts on...

Participatory Video empowers!

Participatory Video is a tool with great potential to empower individuals, groups and communities. It can create a space for the group within the social system, from where the participants can have a voice and influence policymakers and other social, political and economic players who generally exercise their power over these communities.

Concepts like 'participation' and 'empowerment' have often been misused in the practice of development. Indeed, just giving some cameras to a group and teaching the participants some filming skills is not what Participatory Video is about. There are some important elements that need to be taken into account for PV to be truly empowering and participatory.

First of all, the potential and benefits of PV lay not so much on the final product (the video) but on the process that the participants have undertaken to do the video. This process involves different stages of empowerment. Firstly, the participants need to decide what they want their message to be in the video and who should see it and this means that they are identifying or reflecting on the obstacles to their development, or the causes of their oppression (on more 'Freirean' terms). Secondly, reflecting on these issues with the rest of the participants and with the community reasserts their demands and increases the confidence of the community to raise its voice in order to claim its rights. Thirdly, this process involves the identification of potential solutions to the issues that the group is raising, since it would be part of the video to explore the possible solutions and ways forward, especially because the videos aim at raising awareness amongst society and influence policymakers. Finally, the last stage involves the necessary collective action to communicate the message.

This process of empowerment has many parallels with the process of critical consciousness involved in Paulo Freire's 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed', which has also inspired the use of theatre plays in participatory development.

A second element to take into account for PV to be truly empowering involves power relations. This is a very debated issue in any participatory approach to development. PV will empower if the participants are those most disadvantaged in the power dynamics of their social and political context. From gender to clans, castes, and classes, it is important that the voice is truly given to those who benefit least in the power structure. This means that the facilitator of the workshop, the organizations involved in the project and the donors need to prioritise a deep understanding of the local context.

Very connected to these two elements lies a third point: the role of the facilitator in the PV workshop. The facilitator needs to be a co-learner of the process, flexible, sensitive and someone who, rather than dictating it, accompanies the participants during the process of empowerment described.

Video has some specific advantages that distinguish it from other participatory tools. It breaks the illiteracy barrier, the sound and visuals can adapt to the local ways of cultural representation, the message can be transferred without being altered, and policymakers seem to be more ready to listen when there is a video involved.

This just a brief introduction to a deeper academic analysis that can be read in the paper 'Participatory Video and Empowerment: the role of Participatory Video in enhancing the political capability of grassroots communities in participatory development'.

If you are interested in the paper, you can contact the author Anna Colom at coloms@gmail.com.

Jan 2010

2009-12-02T13:07:00.002Z

Living Lens have been awarded a grant from Comic Relief under the Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking programme. The project will take place over 2 years and we will be working with with the Metropolitan Police, Poppy Project, UK Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC), Anti-Slavery International, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and trafficked women to produce a video resource that Support Workers can use with victims. It will enable victims to make informed choices about giving evidence, and prepare those who go ahead, to ensure the process is as supportive and effective as possible.

We are also half way through a project working with a group of young people from the White Lion Centre in Islington. The White Lion Centre has just been closed for a £3.5 million refurbishment. In December the group organised an event that closed the centre and celebrated the new plans. You can read about this in the Islington Gazette, click here to view. The young people and youth workers have become a transition team whose responsibility it is to keep in communication with users of the centre and ensure that people are aware of the activities taking place. They will also be working with the architects in designing the interior of the building to suit the needs of the centres' users.

We are in the middle of a project with Anti-Slavery International and Children Unite that is taking place in India, Peru and Togo. We are working with child domestic workers in all three countries. They are making films that will be used to ensure that the new ILO (International Labour Organisation) Convention on Domestic Work protects children in domestic work from abuse and exploitation. In addition, the project will build the skills and capacity of child domestic workers and the organisations that support them to advocate internationally, nationally and locally through the production of advocacy guidelines to enable replication of advocacy activities with other groups of children.

India Learning Journey 2009

2009-11-27T11:26:00.005Z

Living Lens are proud to be part of a Learning Trip on Social Entrepreneurship in India. We are with a group of people from all over the world who are social entrepreneurs, investors in social enterprise or working in business, and interested in moving into social enterprise. We are visiting social enterprises and are gaining a real insight into the way they work. To give you an example here is an account from Amy following one of our visits.

I visited Anjali on the second day of this trip, so everything is still feeling very new and exciting. After a brief introduction by the founder, Ratnaboli Ray, we were split into groups to visit the hospitals where they work. Anjali work in partnership with the Indian Government to improve the conditions of patients in the mental hospitals of Kolkata and working towards reintegrating patients into their communities where possible. The hospital I visited was Lumbini, a government hospital for both men and women with psychosocial disabilities housed in a residential building in Kolkata. We were told that the patients who attend the Anjali workshops in the hospital were expecting us and looking forward to our visit. What we saw when we entered the building was shocking beyond anything I had ever seen before. The men’s ward consisted of beds side by side with little or no gaps in between them. The plastic mattresses had no sheets and some were torn with the foam coming out. We didn’t go into the women’s ward, but from what I could see the conditions were not much better. The room where Anjali hold their workshops is part dining hall, part open space and part dump for old beds and mattresses that were decaying and gathering dust and rubbish. However, there were cleans mats laid out in the open space for us and the Anjali participants to sit on. We joined their circle and before long the images of the wards and the state of the hospital vanished as were serenaded with beautiful poetry, song and dance. Poems about freedom and about the homes that they no longer see. Each person had a different talent to show us. Some of the people who presented to us seemed, to me, like they would be capable of living in the community with some support, but instead they were imprisoned in this under funded and under equipped hospital. As we left one women ran up to us with her food tray in hand, she said something in Bengali and I asked the worker to translate, she had said: “ I want to go home”.

I was particularly impressed with Ratnaboli Ray’s decision to work in partnership with the Government in order to make lasting changes that would continue to be implemented and developed. Anjali’s work goes beyond the hospitals. As well as advocacy within the government, their work is now being lead by women in communities who having undergone intensive training through Anjali. These women are leading the campaign to bring awareness to the issue and informing on how people with psychosocial disabilities do not necessarily need to be kept in mental health hospitals but with the right support and treatment can remain in or return to their homes and their own communities.

It was both a shocking and inspiring experience for me. The image of the hospital will stay with me and is not something I think or hope I will ever come across in the UK. However, as someone who works with vulnerable people in the UK I was excited and inspired at how forward thinking Anjali are in their methodology. Their work is not only innovative, it is sustainable in that it is a model that not only alleviates trauma and develops creativity in individuals but is also creating leaders in communities to change the way people think about mental health in India.

Why Video?

2009-11-11T17:50:00.008Z

Video is an amazing tool for active education.

We use video in our work because:

It helps focus individuals and brings them together as a working team.
It develops confidence and helps people develop their self-expression.
Clear and open communication is key in developing a shared vision of a film, and is vital in making that vision a reality.
Working with expensive equipment to a tight schedule, often in different locations throws up challenges that force the group to think on their feet and unites them as a group.
Video projects allow participants to perform as a team under pressure and produce real bonds of trust, support and friendship.
The videos produced are a valuable resource that promote discussion and generate change.
It is an exciting time to be involved in education that embraces technological changes as they evolve.

Video and the internet are useful tools that are vital to the work we do, but it is important to remember that ultimately these projects are about individuals coming together, learning together and learning to live together.

Creating New Futures

2009-11-11T17:16:00.004Z

In Peterborough there was rising tension between the host community and newly settled refugees and asylum seekers. We were brought in to work with young people from both communities to build communication and understanding.

On the focUS project the two groups worked separately at first, with each group producing films about their experiences in the city. These films acted as the first point of contact between them, providing an insight into each other’s lives. Watching the films allowed sensitive questions and controversial views to be aired and discussed in a safe environment before the groups met.

The film they went on to make as a single group ‘premiered’, alongside their other films, at the Town Hall allowing friends, family and what we call ‘stake holders’ (those working in the community - youth service, social services, housing, health, refugee organisations, local education) to attend. As a result we’ve had requests for the films to be shown in other settings: schools; youth groups and even open-air screenings in public spaces.

‘You learn, and at the same time contribute to others. They’re learning from you and you’re learning from them. We’re all helpful to each other. It’s like a body – all the parts of a body are very important so if one of it is affected, the whole body is affected.’ Faith, 17 years old

Managing Risks

2009-11-11T15:55:00.001Z

I sometimes wonder how the Police Woman we met to discuss our idea for a participatory video project sold it to her boss at the Metropolitan Police Service…

‘Living Lens want to produce a training video for us on trafficking’
‘Oh yes, what will it be about?’
‘Well I’m not really sure, but it will involve women who’ve been trafficked, they’ll make it.’
‘The women will make the film?’
‘Yes!’
‘Are they film makers?’
‘No!’
‘Do you know what they’re going to say?’
‘No!’
‘Do you think it will be any good?’
‘No idea!’
‘OK let’s do it!’

The project was Fresh Start and the project aim was to have victims of sex trafficking produce a training DVD for the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). We knew we could facilitate a group of trafficked women to produce a training video, but could we convince the Met to use it?

There’s an unavoidable risk in taking on a participatory video (PV) project that aims to produce a usable product at the end of it. The very nature of the participatory process means that the participants, in this case victims of sex trafficking, devise the content and shoot the film themselves. What they want to say to the MPS, may not be what the MPS want to hear, let alone use as a tool in their existing training programme on trafficking.

The key elements we believe support us in taking on risks are:

1. a strong project team – in this case our team had members from the MPS, the POPPY project and Anti-Slavery International. Having members of the project team come from different backgrounds with different perspectives can be a challenge, but the results pay off. We advise meeting in a neutral space.

2. thorough planning – share your planning structure with your project team, review it at regular intervals and make changes. Working with risks means changes are inevitable, make sure everyone is kept up to date.

3. open communication – when things get dicey our natural reaction can be to take cover and try and figure things out, so we can present the solutions and not risk looking like we haven’t got a clue what’s going on. We’ve come to realise that this is the very time to be in open communication with the project team, sharing the breakdown and having everyone be a part of the solution.

4. being with the unknown – it is impossible to know how a participatory project is going to turn out, unless we’re willing to accept this, it is a very nerve-wracking and stressful process. The process requires us to keep listening and observing how the project is opening up. We respond to what is happening, rather than trying to control the process so it turns out the way we think it should.

What is participatory video?

2009-09-29T10:53:00.013+01:00

Participatory video is one of those phrases that is used frequently and really says nothing at all about the kind of projects that are run under its banner. So what’s it all about? At Living Lens we are committed to making video a tool for active learning. We work with a variety of groups, and often with people who wouldn’t normally work together - in Peterborough, a group of young refugees came together with young people from the host community, in the Gambia teenagers from East London worked with a peer group from the Gambia, and Trinidad saw teenagers from the North and South of the island come together to produce films.

While video acts as a tool to focus a groups’ energy, it is the process they experience while working together that we recognise as being more important than the technical production skills they learn in producing a video.

The duration of all our projects varies, and we always develop new group activities to meet the needs of individual groups. Our intention is to provide an active learning experience so that people can learn about an issue first hand, explore different points of view and devise creative ways of presenting these to an audience. We strive to find the right balance between process and product, ensuring the process is participatory and the finished product is not only something the participants are proud of, but also something that others are interested to watch. Having films broadcast is not a priority as we seek to liberate people’s notion of film and take it out of the box in their living rooms and into shared spaces within their communities.

In short our projects look like this:

process of collaboration to produce the video > unique video expressing the groups' views and experiences > process of collaboration to distribute the video to relevant audiences to bring about positive change

The Myth of Authentic Voices

2009-09-29T10:53:00.011+01:00

Our video projects are sometimes seen as a means of gathering the ‘authentic’ voices of a group or community. More often than not these voices belong to marginalised groups; those who rarely get to speak for themselves in public forums. The question of the ‘authenticity’ of the voice became a problem when we were working in Southern Madagascar. The project was responding to a lack of awareness amongst policymakers of indigenous people, their culture and environment. We were brought in to facilitate an indigenous community producing videos for them. The intended outcome was that the videos would educate the policymakers so they would acknowledge the community’s expertise, and respond appropriately to their needs and concerns.

It was a risky project, we were working with an indigenous community in Southern Androy – a region with no electricity, where video and TV were not commonplace. In fact none of the participants had held a video camera before the project. All our equipment had to run off generators that we had to strap to land rovers and carry for 10 hours on dirt roads to reach the village where we would work. Introducing these unknowns to the community was a risk in itself, and we knew it was vital to work with a local NGO to do this in a way that was relevant, sensitive and productive.

The local staff of Andrew Lees Trust had the local knowledge and experience of working with the community that we were lacking. We built partnership with them during a weeks training in PV techniques. This allowed them to take leading roles once we were working with the community on the ground – a good thing you might say, and we thought so at the time – but once the project was underway, we realised that it was going to be difficult for us to distinguish whose voice was being captured.

The local staff on the project each worked with a small local group. Each group produced a video on a different theme of their choosing. We were looking to capture the ‘authentic’ voice of the local community, but would the agendas of the local staff come through? Would it matter? Keren Ghitis from Panos and I debated the question in depth during the course of the project, and concluded that if the NGO staff were part of the group then their views must come out. Where we thought there would be a problem was if their voice was heard at the expense of the community’s voice.

This project left me wondering how one knows if the authentic voice of a community has been captured? After all, what exactly is an authentic voice? I’m not sure I’ve found mine! In Madagascar I was concerned that we were diluting the authentic voice of the Community with the views and agendas of the local NGO staff. However, it was the local staff that allowed us to deepen our understanding of the community, enabling us to be more affective. And it was they that would keep the project alive once we had returned to the UK. They successfully set up local and national screenings with policy makers, media and others, inspiring new conversations, leading to new actions.

Living Lens has come to see our role as PV practitioners as being twofold; we facilitate a process that enables a group to produce a video reflecting their experiences and we also create a project team that can inform the process from the beginning, ensuring that the participants are supported and that their video is used to good affect. In Madagascar, working in the local language, the local staff were able to be our ears and eyes. They also ensured the community’s videos had an impact at a local and national level. Their first hand experience of the project increased their understanding and motivated them to make the project a success.

Through our projects we aim to be successful in facilitating groups to produce videos that represent their experiences. While we want this process to be led by the participants, we also want to create a project team that supports us in the process. The project team can provide experience that allows us to deepen our work with the participants. The team also provides access that allows the videos to reach key audiences and have a real impact.

Transformation Project for Trafficked Women

2009-09-29T10:53:00.010+01:00

We have recently been working on a project with women who have been trafficked into forced prostitution. The project had a transforming impact on the women involved:

"Usually I feel really low when I talk about these things, but today I feel good about having shared them. We're sharing things with people who understand us and it feels different".

"It has boosted my trust, I had problem trusting people, this has changed my perspective."

"I learned more love. Loving people and loving yourself. No matter what you do, you learn to love yourself."

The women produced a DVD guide for new women arriving at the POPPY Project (who provide key services for trafficked women). They also produced a training DVD for the Metropolitan Police Service.

We worked in partnership with the Metropolitan Police's Department of Human Trafficking to incorporate the training DVD into Police training at a national level. As a result of the women's suggestions in the DVD, the Met have revised their interview protocol for victims of trafficking.

The project was funded by Comic Relief and run in partnership with Anti-Slavery International and the POPPY Project.

Messages From Madagascar

2009-09-29T10:53:00.008+01:00

"I'm really eager: it's something that my ancestors have never touched, so now at this point in time we, their grandchildren, are learning, and so it's going to be a teaching for the small ones and for our children and our children's children."

We've been working in Madagascar with an indigenous community in the South Androy region. The community produced six extraordinary films. They live with no electricity, TV or cameras and yet they took to it with ease and grace, and the films they produced were beyond all our expectations.

We had community screenings at the end of the project, and the films are now being shown regionally and nationally, and used as a lobbying tool with decision makers to support changes needed in the community.

Have a look at them at www.panos.org.uk/survivalstrategies. From this page, you can click on the link to Hidden Voices to see the films.

Testimonials

2009-08-01T12:40:00.001+01:00

"It has allowed us to be one, working as a group we realised that we were all different but we were one" Rogers, focUS project

"Very useful for my work. I am looking at creative ways to promote cultural understanding across borders. You've created a truly inspiring piece of work." S.Henderson, British Council

"It was that your opinion was valid and that you should give it. There's nobody in the world that is just like you... that motivated me to present my views. I should just act myself because that is who I am." Sonia, focUS project

"The service you provide is really extraordinary and powerful – with potentially groundbreaking results in terms of shifting attitudes and fixed perceptions between people." Jo Hill, UnLtd

"It is a brilliant product and I’ve enjoyed using it." K. Kinger, Metropolitan Police Service, Fresh Start Project

"I’ve now had a chance to go through everything and watch the films and am really impressed by the quality of the girls work. The films provide a great insight into what matters to these young people in their community. The behind the scenes film also helps me to put some names to the faces and find out from the young people themselves why this project was so important to them. Excellent Stuff!" Rebecca Quansah, Media Box Funding

Contact Us

2009-08-01T12:33:00.001+01:00

Mail us at:
Living Lens
Candid Arts, 3 Torrens Street
London EC1V 1NQ
(map)

Tel: 0207 278 5027

Email: info@livinglens.co.uk

About Us

2009-08-01T11:47:00.006+01:00

Living Lens has been using video as a creative tool with groups in the UK and other countries for over eight years. The foundation of what we bring to every project is expressed in our values:

Contribution: knowing everyone can contribute
Adventure: exploring new opportunities
Passion: igniting the creative drive
Durability: what matters endures.

Our values are at the heart of our approach and reflect the working ethos of our team of experienced facilitators. We use video as a tool to mobilise groups and individuals to explore the issues that bring them together. The camera acts as a shared lens through which to look at the world and gives permission for the group to ask questions of each other and the wider community, that they might otherwise feel embarrassed or inhibited to ask. Our approach builds confidence and develops skills. Project participants produce a finished film of quality and experience the satisfaction of seeing a creative project through from start to finish.

Amy and Rose, founders and directors of Living Lens, have known each other for many years. It was quite by chance that we discovered we had a shared passion in participatory approaches to change. Through our work in development (Amy) and human rights (Rose) we saw how problems arose and persisted due to breakdowns in communication. Using video as a tool to build communication, we found participants were able to go beyond the ‘them’ and ‘us’ mentality that had them stuck in the problem. Living Lens started off with local projects and now run national and international projects. We have a radical approach to facilitation that allows us to love the challenge of working with people who believe change isn’t possible.