It’s been nearly 2 months since the Grenfell Tower fire. In this time 9 survivors, local residents and volunteers have felt compelled to make a film to dispel the public’s fear from the Lancaster West community and reveal the deep impact this has had on them as people.
‘The survivors are not statistics they are humans beings’, says Adrianne McKenzie, one of the film-makers who has been struck by the way the survivors are seen in terms of ‘what they can be given … not as people’. Film-maker and youth worker Nendie Pinto-Duschinsky supported the team of young film-makers and describes the film as ‘harrowing to make’ but the ‘articulacy, dignity and insight of the young people will change perceptions’. Young people lost their lives on the night running into the building to save people. We hope the film will transform the way the community are seen from ‘angry and un-relatable’ to the truth that they are ‘coping with their suffering by trying to help other people’. Their humanity and morality is the clear message.
The media has covered the story in ways that the local community are not satisfied with, the evening will touch in the disparity between eye witness accounts and the reporting of events as they unfold on national media as well as the dangerous spread of misinformation.
There will be a discussion after the film with the survivors of the tragedy and the film-makers to share their personal accounts of the fire, and how disasters like this are reported in the UK.
Joining the discussion will be the journalist Ed Vulliamy. Growing up in Notting Hill, Vulliamy has written regularly on the ruthless development of the area that has divided those living in West London. He regularly writes for the Guardian.
Watch Channel 4’s excerpt of the film here
Interviews with some of the young people in the film here
Speakers
Zoe Dainton and David Benjamin lived on the 4th Floor of Grenfell Tower where the fire started. ‘ We’re two of the lucky ones we survived, we got out. People feel lost right now, everyone’s walking round like zombies[…] Here round Latimer where Grenfell is everyone knew each other, was friendly with each other there wasn’t much trouble. It was nice, as a community we were quite close…Some kids are lucky that they won’t remember this apart from in pictures and videos. There was a girl who went to school the next day and done her GCSEs in her pyjamas, she’s going to remember that forever’.
Shona Harvey lives 5 minutes from Grenfell Tower and went to primary school with Zoe. ‘Ladbroke Grove was a special area for me to grow up in because it’s culturally diverse, and it’s home to one of the biggest street carnivals in the world, The Notting Hill Carnival’, Shoana says. ‘Even myself, I was sitting down with some friends in a cafe, we were talking about what’s going on but then you do pause and think, am I laughing too much? I do think to myself maybe I feel a little better… but then you watch more footage on the news and it hits me again and I can feel my emotions building up and you realise it’s still quite fresh’.
Adrianne McKenzie is a freelance film-maker who spent much of her youth in West London. She was making a film about the closure of Stowe Youth Club near to Grenfell Tower when the fire happened. She picked up her camera and began to record events from the first night. Struck by the de-humanisation of the survivors, spending time on the ground has revealed that ‘…no-one’s really talking much about the people apart from what they can be given. So these luxury apartments or £5,000 from the government… No ones really thought about them as people they are just statistics. I feel like the survivors have been forgotten about. People are fighting a lot for the deceased but not as hard for the people who are still here’.
Reece Yeboah lives underneath Grenfell Tower and sees it every morning. He is a fashion designer and young creative pursuing his dreams. He feels if Princess Diana was alive she would have come and helped the people of Grenfell. ‘My niece goes to nursery in Grenfell Tower so on the morning of the fire I took her to nursery.’ ‘We’re doing this because we’re a community and we’re doing it from our hearts but we shouldn’t have to, the council should be doing this’. I lost 4 or 5 friends in the tower, but it’s probably more, most people in the tower, I used to see them everyday.’
Pilgrim Tucker is a community organiser and campaigner. She has many years experience of working on projects aimed at amplifying the voices of local residents, service users and community members, supporting them to organise to influence decisions that affect them. She worked with Grenfell residents in 2015 to help them campaign against the refurbishment undertaken KCTMO and Rydon. Since the fire she has continued to work with residents on the Lancaster west estate that surrounds the tower.
There will be an optional donation (£5 + standard ticket) when you book. You can also donate optionally via paypal:
We will be accepting donations for the survivors of the fire who will be attending the evening. 20 million pounds was donated by the public to meet the emergency needs of the survivors, many of whom are still ill from the fire without regular food and basic clothing. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council have imposed eligibility criteria which prevent or delay survivors claiming money in many cases. For example to receive the ‘Fresh Start’ grant of £10,000, survivors must be in permanent accommodation, which they are not.
Nearly all of the 250 families are in temporary accommodation as the permanent accommodation offered is unsuitable or not ready. The small percentage of donations that have been given out for the most part have been awarded to community organisations.
We would encourage you to donate to the fund at the screening to help them get on their feet during this uncertain period of their lives.
The Frontline Charitable Trust is a not-for-profit organisation.
]]>“Does the Pubic Still Care?” was the poignant title of the discussion on conflict and disaster reporting which was chaired by Ben Parker at the Frontline Club on Thursday 23 October. The event was organised by the Oversees Development Institute and Humanitarian Policy Group. Channel 4 News anchor, Jon Snow, and senior reporter for the People and Power programme on Al Jazeera English, Juliana Ruhfus, were joined by experts in aid and development, Marc DuBois, former head of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Eva Svoboda, research fellow in the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute.
The event was being followed online #crisisreporting
The relationship of dependency and power that exists between aid agencies, the public and the media was the core focus of the evening. Using examples from Gaza to Haiti and East Timor, the panel illustrated the crisis and development each of these elements has undergone and how it has affected the other.
To begin the audience was taken back to the 1984 Ethiopia famine with Michael Burke’s compelling documentary report. Parker, who has worked in media and humanitarian aid for 20 years, opened the discussion with the following question:
“Can a news moment like Michael Burke’s piece happen again? . . . Can it ignite the public? Can it change the course of history in a small way? . . . Does TV in that same way still exist?”
Snow’s initial response was an affirmative yes. He used examples from the last four years of public response to make his case. For example, the 2010 Haiti earthquake saw the emergency fund raise it’s second largest ever donation. Snow said, “The stream is certainly not dry and I would argue that our connected digital world is making it easier for us to draw attention.”
DuBois similarly dismissed public disaster fatigue and focused on the power of compassion, saying “disaster is inherently compelling . . . compassion is alive and well”.
Ruhfus instead argued that the quality of giving has changed. She referred to the lack of clarity and neutrality in today’s media reports and national aid donations.
“The ‘us’ and ‘them’ that was very simple when Michael Burke made his films has totally shifted. . . . I am the enemy. I am no longer the ‘saviour’ and that’s a similar fate that aid agencies are dealing with too.”
Ruhfus implied that in the past aid agencies were able to function in an apolitical sphere. Svoboda’s standpoint was somewhere in between, to her mind although 9/11 had a negative impact on aid agencies they were always politicised. She argued that despite being more complex, today there are more actors, more competition and, importantly, more accountability. All four of the speakers agreed that more people in the world are aware of what is going on around them than ever before.
The discussion turned to the ever-present Ebola crisis and its slow journey to UK headlines. This highlighted the question of responsibility between the aid agencies and the media to expose conflicts and disasters adequately. Snow asked his fellow speakers, “How far did the aid agencies go in persuading governments that there was a crisis?”
In return he was asked by Svoboda and DuBois how many reports were not picked up by the media. Svoboda said, “Very often you will be faced with people who just don’t care, with states that don’t care about their international obligations.”
Snow clarified the media’s stance, “We are not in the field to raise money or bring relief in any form, but to tell the story.”
Despite his positive outlook Snow admitted the failure of the media coverage on Ebola and thus the insufficient pressure on the UK government. He expressed his frustrations as a journalist with failed government policies. Of the current humanitarian crisis caused by ISIS he said:
“ISIS is a direct consequence of our people, by our people I mean us Westerners. Somehow we made this mess. Of course it was there ready to be made but at least we could have left it to them to make it.”
Ruhfus looked to the public as a key factor and blamed too much negative foreign reporting. She said, “We are in a massive trap as news broadcasters. What do we do? We are loosing our audience because we are telling the ugly truth. How do we respond to that? Do we start making the bad news sound good?”
The media’s metamorphosis has prompted aid agencies to create more of their own media bridging the gap between the two. DuBois expressed his belief that traditional forms of media were no longer adequate. “Being detached and neutral does not sell anymore, people want something authentic.”
When the audience joined in the debate, one member called for a separation between conflict relief and disaster aid stating that the public is far less engaged in the former.
Another pressing comparison was made between development versus emergency aid. Svoboda outlined the dilemma of aid agencies regarding this. “You pass from a crisis into this development and state building and you want to believe it and you ignore the facts that it’s not as stable as you want it to be,” she said. She also called for realism and modesty above all else in her field. “Their needs to be honesty about what can be done, and that’s not always easy because aid org need the money to do the work so how do you do that by selling a story.”
Another audience member observed that given the number of critical issues in today’s world the definition of what constitutes a ‘crisis’ is diminishing. Whether it continues to undermine itself is another question. In any case, the evening ended on a positive note with Snow heralding the current ‘golden age of journalism’. While there may not have been clear answers, the right questions had been asked.
You can watch and listen to the event again here: