Film project focuses on unemployment
Aug 11 2010 by David Whetstone, The Journal
Unemployment is a problem but sometimes it pays to talk. Katie Lin reports on a film project which comes to fruition this week.
Twenty two-year-old Susan Gough, from South Shields, has been desperately trying to escape the perpetual state of being on jobseeker’s allowance.
“I’m trying to get out of the whole vicious cycle by escaping to college to get an education and the experience I need to get the job I want,” she says.
With the help of Fairbridge, Susan will begin training at Northumberland College this September to become an outdoors activities instructor.
But she is no stranger to college classrooms.
It was when she was studying sign language at South Tyneside College in 2009 that she discovered she was hearing-impaired – and this had a surprising effect on her employability.
“I feel like people see the disability and not me,” she says, looking down at her hands.
Despite this, Susan has chosen to make her hearing impairment an integral part of her individual project, with the high-pitched feedback of her hearing aid featuring at the end of her video clip.
With participants ranging in age from 14 to 24 and coming from different walks of life, execution of the project has not been without its challenges.
Fairbridge development tutor Ruth Knighton points out that it is easy to fall into a routine of not doing much.
But she proudly reports: “These guys have come in every day for two weeks, which is quite a big commitment if they’ve not done that for quite some time, whether they’ve been out of school or not been in work or a regular training programme.”
Having watched how the group has grown in confidence as the project progresses, Ruth has come to realise the knock-on effect these personal developments will have on their lives.
“I think they’ll realise they can get respect from people in ways that they didn’t realise before,” she explains.
“This is their opportunity to prove to those people that young people can do really positive stuff. It’s going to open up other people’s eyes to what young people can achieve.
“It may not be Oscar-winning, or the longest film in the world, but these young people have created something that is of great quality.”
On Friday, the Fairbridge group will get the chance to bask in the buzz of their success when the film is screened. When it comes to misconceptions, 24-year-old Lee Mason, from South Shields, has a message: “They just don’t see what we see. Well, now they will.”
