Creative talent unlocked by community broadcasts.
Newham Unlocked Community Broadcasts – part of Newham Council’s exciting new arts, culture and heritage programme – are a series of eight broadcasts being posted online each Thursday.
The broadcasts will feature residents showcasing their talents through video clips filmed on their smart phones or tablet devices. You can submit your videos via a dedicated online platform at www.newhamunlockedbroadcasts.org.
The first broadcast on 25 June was a call out for participation and featured comedian Quincy, award-winning composer Shirley Thompson OBE, and celebrated author, poet and TV’s Peaky Blinders star Benjamin Zephaniah, all of whom have strong links to Newham. They appeared alongside other community voices, all encouraging residents to share their creativity and submit videos.
Each broadcast will be hosted by an inspiring member of the community who will be sharing their own creative story and highlighting how important creativity is to them. The broadcasts capture the spirit of Newham’s community and showcase what people have been creating behind closed doors during the Covid-19 lockdown period and beyond.
Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz said: “Every day across the borough people have been using their imagination and creativity to get through these incredibly challenging times. Creativity can mean different things to different people. Whether you bake, draw, paint, sew, sing, rap, dance, write, or garden, we want to hear from you.”
The broadcast on 2 July will feature six community hosts, who include Times best-seller list writer Vaseem Khan, author of the Baby Ganesh Detective Agency novels. Each week the host will introduce the broadcast before handing over to residents that have submitted their creative videos.
The Council has been working with arts organisation UP Projects and filmmaker Maël Hénaff to produce the broadcasts using people’s submitted content and original footage of the hosts.
Residents are invited to submit up to three short video clips of their creative activities for future Thursday broadcasts. If you want to tell us what creativity means to you and showcase your cooking skills, play an instrument, sing a song, or read a poem, send your video in to give everyone a glimpse of what Newham has been creating behind closed doors and how creativity has contributed to our health and wellbeing.
The different clips will be edited together and broadcast at www.newhamunlockedbroadcasts.org and signposted on Newham Council’s Twitter feed @newhamlondon and Facebook site and other social media channels.
Mayor Fiaz added: “The Newham Unlocked Community Broadcasts are all part of our big plans to ignite the creativity that is bubbling away here by co-producing a powerful arts and cultural programme with our residents that reaches every part of our diverse borough, opens opportunities and gets more people taking part.”
Newham Unlocked is part of a developing cultural strategy that will support the Mayor’s Community Wealth Building and Inclusive Economy agendas.
Another element of the Newham Unlocked programme will be a festival of pop-up performances that will be streamed online. Arts development organisation Certain Blacks Ltd, which supports the growth of diverse artists, is working with the Council on performances featuring local people in various locations throughout the borough.