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Aberdeen media charity receives government pilot funding
SHMU TO START THEIR CREATE-EXPRESS-TRANSFORM PROJECT NEXT MONTH
Aberdeen charity SHMU received funding from Inspire Scotland to further develop their community work. The funding will be invested in a project named after the charity’s motto “Create-Express-Transform” and will aim to help adults with societal barriers to obtain the skills they need to go forward. To accomplish this, SHMU has partnered with four other community justice charities in Aberdeen: Aberdeen in Recovery, Aberdeen Cyrenians, Turning Point Scotland and Families Outside.
The project is another addition to all the work that the charity has done this year to help communities through the global pandemic. I interviewed Kirsteen Caldwell, the Adult Community Development Worker at SHMU, who walked me through the work that the charity has done in the past few months and how the new project seats in the development of already existing services.
“Everything we do is community-focused”.
- Kirsteen Caldwell
SHMU was officially established as a charity in 2003 and supports the seven regeneration areas of the city with help in media development. Their core community services are focused around a radio and television programme as well as a community magazine. They provide several youth services, in primary and secondary schools to develop children’s media skills, as well employability programmes and media
qualifications for teenagers between the age of 18 and 19. Even though the charity is seen as being at the core of community media development in Scotland, Kirsteen estimates that the media side of the charity is the tool that they use to engage with people for them to be able express themselves and get them a platform to talk about issues that are important to them.
During the national lockdown that started in March, staff and volunteers didn’t give up on their mission to help the community and pushed through to make sure everyone was supported.
Radio station: The show must go on
SHMU radio is run by 200 volunteers and after the lockdown started, the charity managed to get some funding to distribute headsets and laptops to people working at the station so that they could work from home. The charity created a show entitled “Tell us”, where local people, charities and organisations where giving out important information such as where the food banks where or where they could contact people to help with their shopping if they were required to self-isolate or if they were part of a high-risk population.
The show was also an opportunity for anyone affected by the pandemic to share their struggles, such as key workers who were given a segment of the show to talk about their experience working in an apocalyptic environment. “It was amazing, everyone jumped on”, Kirsteen says, highlighting again that the community really brought the project to life.
TV programme: Still in lockdown
SHMU received funding in April to develop a television programme that would involve the same kind of work that they are currently doing with the radio. Because of the lockdown, they didn’t get the opportunity to start the project as they couldn’t go out and film.
Kirsteen hopes that the project will be up and running by the end of the year so that they can launch their community live show. “Previously we’ve used film and TV to do some of the youth work”, Kirsteen explains, “but it’s never become its own community thing”.
The Create-Express-Transform project is an addition to a long-running strand of adult community work done by the charity. In 2015, SHMU received money through the Big Lottery Fund and started their work with His Majesty’s Prison in Grampian. “When the prison was being built in Grampian, we got a media unit built in as part of it, so HMP Grampian’s got a radio studio that is fully functional, the same as SHMU”, Kirsteen explains. A staff member from the charity was based at the prison to deliver courses throughout the week to get people through qualifications as well as helping them with personal development: “we had a support service that ran alongside it as well”, Kirsteen says. The new funding was supposed to start in April, but COVID hit and the project had to be put on hold.
"The projects give a lovely sense of community"
- Kirsteen Caldwell
Community magazine: At the community’s door, but 2 meters away
The charity distributes a different magazine for each regeneration area they work in.
During the lockdown, these seven communities worked together to get the magazine to people’s doors, which never happened before, Kirsteen claims. “It’s really nice that some of the local areas have pulled together to pull resources and to work together to make it easier to get the magazine out and do more copies”, Kirsteen adds, pointing out that this collaboration allowed for the distribution of tens of thousands of magazines.
Torry's community magazine ©SHMU
“There was a lot of panicking within the prison regarding what was happening”.
- Kirsteen Caldwell
During the lockdown, the charity started independent work with the prison to stay connected to the prisoners who were completely cut off, with their only window to the outside world being their TV where they could get the general news. “They were barely able to speak to families”, Kirsteen recalls, “there were no services going in because it was such a serious lockdown”. To support them through these tough times, SHMU ran a radio show every day to give people in the prison
government updates and presenting them with any help that was available. Kirsteen reveals that “there was a lot of panicking within the prison regarding what was happening” so they had to work with a number of different services in the community to get recordings and interviews to air in the prison and feed some of their programmes such as their mental health show.
CREATE-EXPRESS-TRANSFORM
The funding received for SHMU’s new project is part of a pilot funding programme from Inspire Scotland called “Creative Communities”. This programme is funded by the Scottish Government’s Culture and Justice secretaries, and aims to support communities to develop cultural activities around Scotland.
Kirsteen explains that this project follows more or less the same work that is being done with the youth groups but is especially made for adults with societal barriers, such as people with prison experience, individuals with mental health issues, victims of addictions or people suffering from homelessness. The funding will be available from November 2020 until July 2020 but Kirsteen suggests that it could develop further in the future: “the good thing about Inspire Scotland is that they always do these pilot projects and then they try and support you to move into the second phase of their funding”.
The project will run 6 to 8 weeks courses where the participants will be divided in several groups and have a designated tutor who will come in to deliver a variety of work such as music, spoken word, creative writing, film and radio. At the start of December, each of the charities SHMU partnered with will decide what they want to do within their group. Kirsteen states that they can choose from a wide range of activities from the creation of an advert or a song, to the production of a documentary. The participants will be encouraged to do a piece about their personal experiences or something with a more general topic that tries to break down barriers. Their final creation will be promoted through the charity’s platforms.
Kirsteen and the staff members at SHMU are working hard to make the project run smoothly even through the COVID crisis. They will use a blended approach to deliver the course by mostly using zoom for planning meetings and try to go into the office only one day a week to use the equipment. “The whole point of the project is for people to come together and have that shared experience of learning to do things”, Kirsteen says, pointing out that it is hard to connect with people through a computer screen. Kirsteen adds that they will practice social distancing in the office to preserve the participants’ safety, but that they are also allowed to not feel comfortable with seeing people face-to-face: “we’ll have to play by ear as we go”, Kirsteen says, “it’s more about people’s own anxieties”. Kirsteen also welcomes the idea that they could be using the park outside their office to get some footage for video content, if the Aberdeen weather allows them to do so, she says, immediately followed by a laugh.
The plan for the time being is to have small groups of between five and eight people maximum but Kirsteen hopes that this will be the start of a project that will become embedded in the organisation and that they will be able to welcome more people once it is safe to do so. “The guys and women in the prison that we work with all have incredible stories, they are not all traumatic and sad”, Kirsteen states in the hope that they will be able to share more and more of their experiences.
Kirsteen affirms that “everyone is excited” about the project because they have been wanting to expand their prison work for a long time now, as well as the adult services, until COVID put an halt to most of these plans.
“There was tears and laughter”
- Kirsteen Caldwell
The Create-Express-Transform project officially launched on the 2nd November with a Zoom meeting attended by the charity’s staff members and the Scottish Secretary for Justice, Humza Yousaf. Kirsteen recalls that “there was tears and laughter” during the meeting because they were so happy to be starting a fresh new project after all these months of having to work remotely. “Staff is desperate to get back and do stuff face to face” Kirsteen confirms.
Kirsteen concludes by saying that the development of the project will be a challenge but that she is looking forward to it.
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Article written by Clara Maurillon