VIEW, Issue two, 2012
Finding salvation in education
Page 14
VIEW screens a new film about the Lenadoon- Suffolk interface Go to:
http://bit.ly/xfUcli
new short filmcalled ‘Creating Change at the Interface: Mentoring the Mentors’ focuses on an innovative youth work training scheme at a once notorious interface in west Belfast. Bernard Conlon, who carried out communica- tions work for the Suffolk Lenadoon Interface Group (SLIG), the community organisation behind the scheme, worked with Northern Visions to make this film.
A
Celebration: Students and SLIG project staff at a lunch in the Beechlawn House Hotel Filming started in March last year with extra
footage shot later in the year. The Youth Student Trainee Programme is one of
Suffolk and Lenadoon, providing guidance and ad- vice on educational, training and other opportuni- ties.
SLIG’s newest projects and aims to train a series of frontline youth workers on a cross-community basis.
These workers will mentor the young people of
Picture: Kevin Cooper
The short film looks at some of these future mentors, who themselves have been mentored by SLIG and the University of Ulster. They talk about their experience of school and education, the Troubles, and interface violence and what they think of what SLIG is doing. It is an optimistic tale of grassroots innovation
and provides a signpost for community action that politicians and policy-makers everywhere should take notice of.
‘Embedded’ in west Belfast for a year
HAVING spent my journalistic heyday in Brus- sels when the European project was riding high, the west Belfast community sector pro- vided a suitable counterbalance.
It is now over six months since I was CO for the Suffolk Lenadoon Interface Group (SLIG) – a ground-breaking cross-community organisa- tion nestled below the southern end of the Belfast Hills. Preventing the outbreak of inter- face violence is its primary purpose. Close links with Northern Visions (NV), Belfast’s community television and film-making body, prompted filming of SLIG’s milestone events and flagship projects. The 10th anniver- sary celebration of the Stewartstown Road Re- generation Project allowed Suffolk and Lenadoon’s key people to be interviewed in one go. A 15-minute film resulted. I had already filmed a sequence of inter- views with a group from SLIG’s Youthwork Stu-
Bernard Conlon, who worked on the film, writes about his experi- ence of being ‘embedded’ as a communications officer in west Belfast for a year
An avalanche of media coverage was gener- ated by a Royal Wedding celebration in Suf- folk, involving SLIG and community support
An audio-visual trilogy was completed by a 10-minute film devoted to SLIG’s Healthy Eat- ing Fun Day and campaign.
Iconic photographs of the Stormont launch of the youthwork scheme and other key events by Photoline photographer Kevin Cooper pro- vided the stills.
dent Trainee Programme. This spiralled into a proper documentary. NV trained me to edit and use the camera and I walk around Suffolk and Lenadoon capturing footage.
from Lenadoon.
in the Belfast Telegraph and BBC and RTE coverage.
This produced a front-page
As a result, SLIG became the media’s de- fault community organisation and source of choice on the ‘Shared Space’ agenda. It was, for example, the subject of a Finan-
cial Times interview – probably the most influ- ential newspaper in the world.
As for the film work, it can be accessed on the internet via Vimeo and will be shown at a seminar: Communicating Communit at the end of March.
Organised by NV and InforCulture Forum, it will look at community sector communications capacity-building. My embedded experience taught me about the intricate peace-building process that is a work in progress and, of course, made a film-maker out of me. Not bad for a year-long assignment.
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