Why I Respect: Filming in the Community

After weeks of planning the students went out into the community to film their project today with  Shagia and Oneil, two peer educators with UNITY.  We split them into 2 groups, one focussing  on Chinese culture and the other visiting the multicultural area of St Marks Road in Easton.

Group 1:

The Chinese group visited the Wai Yee Hong supermarket in Eastgate where they filmed all the different Chinese food, tried their hand at presenting and bought a few items to share with their classmates. They then went on to visit the Bristol and Avon Chinese Women’s Group, a local community organisation that supports the Chinese population of Bristol. Students interviewed staff from the organisation about Chinese culture and were fortunate enough to visit an arts project for older Chinese women. Although the women could speak no English they were clearly pleased to see the young people and took great pleasure in showing them how to make various origami animals to their delight.

The importance of the orgaisation was brought home to the students by the workers at the project who described the isolation felt by many of the women who could speak no English and had never learnt to write before. The project gave the women a space to come together, share skills and meet new people in the community. They showed us a fantastic book that the women had compiled filled with beautifully illustrated recipes and batique Chinese characters that they were really proud of.

Group 2:

The second group visited St Marks Road in Easton, an incredibly diverse and culturally rich street with it’s many local businesses and community groups. The young people interviewed varioius shop keepers, from the barbers to the hallal butchers and Mr Abdul Ismail from the Brisol Sweet Mart, who gave them a detailed account of how his family escaped persecution in Uganda and came to this country to start a new life and set up their own business. The group then had the opportunity to sample some of the wonderful food that the Sweet Mart had to offer from pakoras to gulab jamen before heading back to school to compare their footage with the other group.

Over the next few days we’ll be working on the edit before taking the students to BBC Bristol to edit together the final piece. The finished film will be available to view on youtube in a couple of weeks and will be screened at Fairfield School’s DiversEC1ty Day.

What the students learnt and enjoyed:

'I enjoyed going to the chinese supermarket'

'I learnt how to interview people properly.'

'I enjoyed finding out about different cultures.'  

What our peer educators thought:

'I really enjoyed going out into the community. The young people were very encouraging to each other and seemed quite professional when interviewing.' - Shagia, 19 

Why I Respect: Fairfield School Session 2

This session was great fun as we started off by playing games to get them thinking about their likes and dislikes and also learning each other’s names. Oneil then led a heritage game where the young people had to describe what they thought the heritage of the person next to them was and whether they thought they were born in the UK. This led to some interesting discussion on why they had formed these opinions, some based on surnames and others based on hair and eye colour.


To follow up this activity we got everyone to put stickers on a world map on the countries their family is connected to. This helped them to visualise the diversity of their group.

After looking at their own heritage and cultures we gave them time to plan what cultures they would like to focus on for their project. Each group put forward their ideas and the peer educators facilitated a democratic voting system to give the young people real ownership of the project. The final topic choices were edited several times until the whole group was happy with the direction they were going to take. The students also discussed things they would like to find out about these cultures. The peer educators were fantastic at making sure they considered all the practical elements such as how they could interview people from these communities and ensuring they kept in mind the time frame of the project.

This week we introduced another peer educator to the team, Shagia so it was her turn to sit in the hot seat for the 'First Impressions' activity. The young people were still way off on a few topics but it also led them to ask other questions about religion and travel as well as other topics which shows they are really thinking about all the elements that make up a persons identity.

What the students thought:
'I enjoyed the word association and learning about different cultures.'

'I learnt alot about different cultures.'

'Awesome, best ever!'
 
What the Peer Educators thought:
'I feel this session went very well and the kids felt they had a lot of control over the ideas which was what we want.' Oneil, 22

'At first I was really quiet but then managed to speak to everyone. The whole experience was really good and getting to know everyone. I really enjoyed working with the kids on this project and I hope it goes well in future sessions.' Shagia, 19

Why I Respect...

The Project
Why I Respect has been developed in response to an idea put forward by the UNITY steering group of peer educators. The project aims to encourage young people to explore the diversity of their own communities and promote cultural understanding and respect for others.

Our aim is to run workshops with different groups around Bristol from schools to youth groups, actively encouraging young people to get out into their communities and engage with different groups.

The Pilot: Fairfield School
Our pilot project is taking place at Fairfield school where a team of peer educators from UNITY will work with Year 9 students. Students will work with the peer educators to investigate ideas of cultural identity in their local area (EC1) and create a 5-minute video celebrating cultural diversity.

The finished film will be shown at the schools Bristol: DiveEC1ty event in March and will be used as an educational resource for workshops and assemblies given by the Year 9 students at Fairfield's feeder primary schools.

Session 1
This first session was all about getting to know the young people and allowing our peer educators Claire and Oneil to get a feel for the project and their involvement. We played lots of icebreaker games to get the young people to feel relaxed and help us find out more about them. One of the best activities was the Heritage Flag. We asked each group to draw a flag and draw or write in each corner:

• Something you like doing
• Something that represents who you are
• Something that represents where you live
• Something that is important to your family

We had some great discussion around these points and it led the group to find out more about the people they see at school everyday.

The 'First Impressions' Activity was the most popular though. We asked the young people to answer a series of questions about the peer educators and UNITY staff based only on their first impressions of us. The questions ranged from how old we were to what music we liked and how rich we were! On some aspects they seemed to have us pretty well sussed out but other things were way off and it served as a great tool to show them how wrong their first impressions and assumptions about people can sometimes be.

What our Peer Educators thought:
'I felt it went very well. The main thing is that the kids enjoy themselves. They learnt that you can't judge a book by its cover.' Oneil, 22

'I was impressed with the kids behaviour and how thy responded to us. They were coming up with lots of ideas.' Claire, 24

What the students thought:

 

Overall it was a fantastic first session, filled with energy, ideas and enthusiasm and we can't wait to go back next week!

Winter Wonderland

Happy New Year everyone!
Well 2010 is here and although we’ve had a rather slow start to the year with all this snow the end of December was busy for us with lots of celebratory events of the years work.

Face 2 Face
A special screening was held at the Watershed cinema to celebrate the work all our young people did with the BBC as part of their Face 2 Face scheme. All the films they made during the initial 3-day training workshop were screened at the cinema and each received a special certificate from the BBC acknowledging their work. We look forward to watching these bright stars make their mark during 2010 as they undergo more training and have the chance to compete for a job with the BBC at the end of the scheme. Good luck guys!

Filming ‘A Drunken Mistake’ in Lawrence Western
All last term UNITY staff and peer educators travelled out to Lawrence Western to support young people at one of Bread’s other youth projects Juicy Blitz. The aim was to film a script the young people had written about underage drinking, a big problem in the local area. We supported planning sessions led by an amazing team from BBC Bristol and braved the cold before Christmas to start filming. During January and February we hope (weather permitting) to finish shooting so watch this space for more information on the project and a chance to see the finished piece.

Coming up in 2010…
We have a whole host of opportunities for volunteering with Bread and UNITY this year. We have 3 new members of staff (Becky, Janene and Natalie) who form the new V team, dedicated to getting young people the skills and experience they need. V is for volunteering and by signing up with the team you can access any volunteering opportunities within our 4 projects (including UNITY) as well as developing your own ideas. You can achieve awards and recognition for the hours you do so it's great experience for those looking to build up their CVs.

The V team are a great bunch and you can find their contact details on the Bread website here and find out more about V here.

We have lots of exciting film and peer education projects coming up this term so sign up to get more information.

Season's Greetings!

We'd just like to say a big thank you to all those that have supported the UNITY project during 2009 and to all the young people that have worked with us over the past few months.

Our offices will be closed for two weeks now over the holidays but we'll be back in action from the 4th January 2010. We're really looking forward to all the exciting projects we have coming up in the new year so watch this space for details of how you can be involved.

Merry Christmas to you all and a very Happy New Year!

From Ina, Stephanie and everyone at Bread.

Have your say....

Over the past few months we've worked on a large variety of projects with young people from across Bristol. Here's what they have to say about what they've done:

St Paul's Carnival

'It was amazing to see all the different floats, seeing the different colours and the vibrancy of everything. I found it interesting recording the interviews that were going on and it really made me think about how to place the microphone to get the best recording. I enjoyed collecting background noise to build up an audio story of the day and I learnt a lot from listening to how other people do interviews which made me think how I could improve my own technique. It was interesting listening to everybody's roles within the carnival and how they made it happen. I want to work in acoustics in the future so the day gave me an insight into another job that uses the skills I have in a different way. It was nice to see people didn't have any inhibitions about working with people from different cultures and I enjoyed seeing everyone gathered together to celebrate the same thing. I didn't realise there were so many diverse people in Bristol and this is the first time I've been to the carnival. I really enjoyed the day and it showed a different side to Bristol that hadn’t seen before.' - Callum, 19

Bristol Asian Mela

'At the Mela I learnt how to interview people and take photos to share the event with other people who weren't there. I am interested in photography and sharing sights with other people. I will use the skills I learnt to further my knowledge of photography and learning more about new cultures. Being somewhere I would normally feel uncomfortable, but it was great 'cos I felt so welcome and comfortable and enjoyed every minute of it. I tried some food there, which I have never eaten before. After trying one thing I felt more open to trying new things because it didn't seem so gross. Even though our cultures are different, we are the same in so many ways. And we all just had a great time working together as a team. The main highlight was enjoying myself and getting a henna tattoo. Everybody there was really friendly and I would absolutely love to go there again as I had such a great day and would recommend it to friends.' - Natalie-Jade,18

UNITY Peer Education Sessions - Docklands Youth Club 

I'm really enjoying the sessions. I do like working in larger groups but its nice having a more intimate session in a smaller group. This sort of training is right up my street as it's helping me learn and improve. Learning is a big part of my life and ever since I left school I just try and take any chance I get to learn new stuff.' - Linzy, 21 

Mela Post-Production at the BBC

'I enjoyed editing with Jamie and I managed to get the gist of what he was doing. I learnt more about audio editing and I really liked the fast pace of the day. The environment was really relaxed and it was good to be involved.' - Adrian, 22

Bread Residential

'I found it really really good. Everything is still really new to me so it's nice to see how many great people are involved with BREAD. I thought wow this is amazing. The best thing was probably just meeting everyone and learning what all their skills are. It made me want to definitely get involved more and pursue more youth work stuff. I can definitely see myself in one of those roles in the future.' - Linzy, 21

BBC Face 2 Face Workshops 

'It was a really practical and hands-on experience, working with a different mentor each day and being treated like staff gave me a real feeling of what it would be like to work at the BBC. We worked with young people from different groups to create a film around the theme "Is the BBC for me?". We all got the opportunity to try each role in our groups from interviewing, to using the camera and working on audio. I learnt some new skills such as how to set up shots and improved my interviewing technique. All the people who worked with us were really relaxed and easy to talk to, we even got the chance to meet the head of BBC Bristol. It was a very rewarding experience and I've made lots of contacts. Over the next 12 weeks I'll be attending workshops to polish my skills and learn more about the industry and I hope to be doing some work with BBC Blast in the future.' - Oneil, 22 

'I really enjoyed interviewing weatherman Richard Anguin as he was a cool person and helped us develop the idea of our film. I think the workshops made a difference to me as I gained a lot of knowledge of people working in the newsroom and it helped me make new contacts. Is the BBC for me? Yes I do think it is for me. It was a real eye opener working here the last couple of days. I saw the highs and lows and now know what to expect. It was a lot of pressure working on something, having only 1 day to film and 1 day to edit but I got a real buzz from being so busy. I'm definitely going to be taking up the offer of mentoring and plan to focus more on the behind the scenes aspects of production. I just want to say thank you to UNITY, BREAD and the BBC for this opportunity, it was really important to me.' - Adrian, 22 

You can see photos and videos of all our past projects on our Flickr and youtube sites.

New promo materials for UNITY

We've been slaving away to update our promo materials so here's sneak peek of our new leaflets that will be hitting the streets in 2010.....

We'll be recruiting lots of peer eductaors for exciting projects in the new year so watch this space for details of opportunities comming up in the next few months.