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“What’s Your Story?” is a course run by Immediate Theatre under the Create Your Future programme.
We spoke to Gbenga Olopade from Immediate Theatre to find out about their recent filmmaking workshops.
What did the funding from Create Your Future mean to your organisation?
It gave us opportunity to work with participants suffering self-esteem and confidence issues. We were very excited to receive the funding to deliver a course where we can use drama, film, play and one-to-one intense support to create a recipe for a more suitably desired outcome.
Did you face any challenges/barriers in delivering this course?
Childcare was a barrier when recruiting potential participants who abstained from signing up because we did not offer childcare alongside the course. We later revisited our budget and employed a childminder.
The participants decided to use the barrier of childcare as the topic for the documentary as it was a consistent theme across the group. 12 women attended the taster day and 8 completed the course and achieved the AQA Level 1 Certificate in Introduction to Filmmaking.
What have you learnt?
I learnt that this demographic have been saddled with a negative persona by society. Society doesn’t value what unemployed BAME women are capable of. For example, one participant speaks 6 different languages and another is a self-taught baker who makes cakes to a professional standard.
What have the women gained from attending the workshops?
From Immediate Theatre’s perspective, we wanted to develop practical skills in film-making, presentation skills, encourage team-working, raise self-esteem, and to build on portfolios.
100% of the women reported increased self-esteem and confidence and were able to identify their strengths.
Since attending the 4 week workshop the group have established their own positive social network. The women in the group are now able to babysit for each other and give advice and support on personal issues.
As part of the course, Immediate Theatre provide the group with up to 20 one-to-one sessions for support with finding suitable work experience, jobs and training/education opportunities.
To find out more about Create Your Future pre-employment project click here.
