Entrepreneur Through Creativity & Innovation

Turn Flicks

£5000

Our project to empowered refugee youth and women via delivery of both online and physical training in creative activities. These activities were focused on how to create podcasts, how cameras work, sound recording and editing. Online trainings were to be supported by one-to-one coaching from experts in the field.

The participants of the project recorded a podcast drama series, sharing the stories of Refugee African-Scots within the local community as their final project for the trainings received during the project.

The entire project and the recorded podcast involved the synergy of creative individuals from the Refugee Black Africans living in Scotland. At a time when Refugee Black stories are underrepresented and often undervalued in Scotland, we wanted to use this opportunity to shine a spotlight on members of the Scottish Refugee African community, amplifying their voices and creative abilities to a wider audience.

New Scots reached

260

Key Information

Through our ongoing consultations at workshops, auditions, trainings and film productions, we realised that a large proportion of the refugee youth and unemployed persons from the African Community in Glasgow are very interested in media creative industries but don’t know where to start. The consultations revealed a distinct lack of creative opportunities for refugee people of African descent in Scotland, and especially young Africans and African women refugees. The aims for this project were therefore not only allow these young refugee creatives direct access to high quality arts activities, but to also enable them to gain in-depth knowledge and skills that they can use to create their own content post-project and be able to market them to wider audiences and compete with mainstream creatives to earn a living by using their creativity.

Key Information

Geographical reach

Glasgow

Dates

13/09/2021 – 30/04/2022

Target Groups

African refugee youth and women, local community members

Project Type

Supporting innovation

Situation

As the leading African Refugee creative organization in Scotland, we believe that the podcast is a ground breaking unique and accessible medium to bring fresh stories directly to a new audience – hence supporting innovation by piloting new approaches, practices and tolls that support integration across Scotland. Now more than ever it’s vital that we remain creative and connected, developing the skills of emerging Refugee Black creatives as we share our stories with the wider community in a manner that will enable us to keep safe during this current pandemic and beyond during what will be the new normal.

Involvement of New Scots in project

We were able to involve refugees in the delivery of our project because the project was designed around the refugees at the heart of the project. Our main aim and focus was to engage and involve the refugees in order to empower them to begin to use the tools and technology available to their advantage so that they could acquire skills that would be useful to them and become more settled in Scotland.

Impact

We strongly believe our project has brought about some significant changes in terms of getting the asylum seekers of African descent more engaged in digital production. Our aim at the start of the project was to create awareness among our beneficiaries to gain vocational skills that would be useful for them in the long-run and that they can use to promote their talents online. We saw a significant change as some of the beneficiaries began to use the editing skills they acquired during our training and some of them have even begun to set up their own online platforms to share their journeys. Our project also reduced experiences of isolation and increased mental well-being as our beneficiaries began to socialise more after the Covid pandemic all thanks to our project.

Challenges encountered

The one-to-one training sessions were challenging for us due to the fact that some beneficiaries were only available at specific times for the training.

Solutions

We designed the training in a way that would make it flexible for participants to participate at a convenient time for them. Even so, many wanted time slots that were almost impossible for our trainers. Overall, however, we were able to reach more people than we planned and the training sessions worked really well, especially the online training as more people were able to join us live and contribute.

The positive aspects of taking on a new approach (innovative)/How the project has expanded on existing examples of good practice (good practice)

As a creative organization, we normally gather in physical spaces to deliver our projects. However, the outbreak of Covid-19 meant we had to look for alternative ways to carry out projects and so we adopted the strategy of delivering the training sessions online. To our surprise this approach went even further than we envisaged as it allowed more participants to join us without the barrier of location.

Reflections

We believe we reached as many people as possible and we engaged with them via networks and personal contacts because our target groups and beneficiaries usually wouldn’t be easily accessible due to their immigration status and they tend to keep to themselves or shy from public events.

We have learned that as an organization we need to take the lead with setting times for particular trainings. Even though we would continue to strive to deliver convenience for our beneficiaries, however, we still need to put our feet to the ground in order for things to be more organized. We would set out timeframes and schedules for future one-to-one trainings to avoid complications.

Further Information

Some of the training videos are available online and can be used by other refugee groups who would want to explore the creative route to be able to create content to share their skills, knowledge and experiences.

Further Information

Keywords

Asylum, digital, Glasgow, innovative, online, Refugee, Turn Flicks

Contact

Contact:
Project Contact

Email:
olumidefadeyibi@gmail.com