Some notes on the Winter Garden 360 film

“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.”  Noam Chomsky

Sound bites

I’m listening to a 360 film I've been working on for three years. Ok, I've made that sound more epic than it actually is. Yes, the first shoot did happen in December 2016 but then I did nothing for 18 months. Just waiting for something to happen. Then everything happened very quickly. I did a second shoot in September 2018 and the last shoot in the week before Christmas. 

Now, three months later I'm listening to the Sound mix in my headset. It's spatial. When I turn my head to look at a sound or look away from a sound the sound doesn't move. Like an obedient dog it stays put, inseparable from the thing it belongs to. But something’s bothering me and it's the same thing that's been bothering me for weeks. It's the voices in my head. Sound bites from interviews that I've been ordering and re ordering, whittling away at, shuffling around for weeks on end. Most of them sound all right. But one of them  - to my ears - is driving me round the bend. 

I'd interviewed Hazel during the first shoot in 2016. We'd taken over a small space in the back of a house on Cairns Street. Hazel held forth for over an hour. It was gripping, poetic, eloquent, candid, and brilliant. Unfortunately, although she was wearing a lapel mic we hadn't turned it on. Or something. The crappy mic that comes with the camera was doing all the work. And so the voice I'm hearing in my headset is a constant reminder of that mistake. It does sound a bit echoey. 

To be honest all the interviews reveal the limits of my sound recording know how. You can hear the traffic. Or the air conditioning. Or hair dryers. Or the bloody echo. Part of the problem, I think, was that I was just choosing the wrong spaces to do the interviews in.  Spaces that were as far from a sound booth in audio terms as one could hope to find. Hazel is just the worst offender. 

Introduction

In December 2015 Assemble – a collective of artists and designers– won the Turner Prize for their work with theembattled residents of Granby, in Toxteth, Liverpool. Since the riots in ‘81, the residents had been trapped in a downward spiral of ‘managed decline’, and were constantly facing the demolition of their homes and the relocation of their community.

But they fought back. And their weapon of choice was creativity. Taking control of their streets with gardens, murals and markets, they reclaimed their neighbourhood. In 2011 theyformed a Community Land Trust and then, four years later, they joined forces with Assemble to work out ways to rebuild their community and get Granby back on its feet.

Together they reimagined what the neighborhood could look like. One idea that emerged from this collaboration, and which really took hold, was to transform two derelict Victorian houses on Cairns Street into a Winter Garden and artists’ residence. A well-known illustration of this concept depicts the interior of a terraced house with trees inside it. For many, the image of lush vegetation flourishing within the envelope of a Victorian house captured the essence of this extraordinary partnership and the hope of revitalising a neighbourhood.  

Work on the Winter Garden began in 2016 and was completed three years later. In a world where everything is transactional, where so much is being sold off and where very few social spaces are being built, the people of Granby and Assemble have created a public space where people can meet and talk and build a community. 

What is this film?

“The Winter Garden”isa 360 film that captures this transformation. At its heart are the residents of Granby who pulled themselves out of some pretty dire circumstances, revitalised their neighborhood and turned a derelict house in the middle of a street into a community centre and artists residence. 

Shot and edited over three years, and made possible by a grant from The Space, the film focuses on the Winter Garden itself, as well as the surrounding neighborhood. 

At the core of the film are scenes that place the user inside the Winter Garden during key stages of its build. We see it in its derelict state – four brick walls and no roof. We’re there when the trees are brought in, and we’re there a few months later when the space is being used by the residents for a gardening workshop. Punctuating these scenes are moments that place us within the neighbourhood – a resident’s home, a hair and beauty salon, the local streets. 

One of our aims when making this film was to convey the aspirations of the residents themselves and make them the focus of the experience. These are peoplewho faced the demolition of their homes and fought back with creativity instead of negativity and hate. The narrative for the film is therefore delivered, owned and driven by the residents who touch on their feelings about the past and, more importantly, voice their hopes for the future. This flow of sound bites is drawn from interviews conducted over the three years of the build. 

We hope that, when experiencing this film, the user will feel as if they are actually in Granby, in the midst of something extraordinary while hearing the innermost thoughts of the people who live there. 

It is what it is

I've just purchased an Oculus Go headset. This is a couple of weeks after the picture edit is locked and a few days after the Sound mix. Up till now I've been experiencing the film inside a six quid cardboard box made by Google while listening to the soundtrack on my headphones. An experience that's better than you’d think. But now, having shelled out on this shiny new headset, I was expecting a quantum leap forward. David Betteridge, The director, had emailed me the other day to say how great the sequences were looking in 6K. And at the Sound mix I’d done with Breen Turner at the National Film and Television school we'd tackled the variability of the dialogue and made Hazel sound pretty good. 

So with the headset on, and a thumbnail of Granby floating in front of me, I’m apprehensive, but also excited. I watch the film. And indeed it does look fantastic. It also sounds great. But... Hazel… had I fooled myself into thinking we’d got rid of that echo? 

I email David. He's had to put up with my Hazel obsession for some time now. He says it sounds better. I’ll never completely undo the quality of that initial recording. It is what it is. I'm simultaneously relieved and ... I decide to look at some other films for comparison. 

There’s a bunch of great 360 documentaries you can access through the Oculus. And so I’m listening to these other films, with their narrators talking in the middle of my head. Refugees, prisoners, teenagers, tour guides, educational voice-overs, presidents, all of them sound the same. Perfect. Crisp. Bright. Nuanced. These are voices that resonate in your head. Recorded by people who know exactly what they're doing. 

But hang on...there is something that’s not quite right. Something that’s creating a disconnect between what I’m hearing and what I’m seeing. And at the moment, I can’t quite put my finger on what that thing is? 

The social / political context 

It’s worth noting that the build of the Winter Garden and indeed the production of the film covers a particularly tumultuous period in the life of this country. Pre-production began not long before the murder of Jo Cox in 2016 and the project began to wrap up around the time we were originally scheduled to leave the EU, March 29th2019. 

Throughout this period, the impact of austerity and the toxic waters stirred up by Brexit were creating a nation more divided than ever. Hate crimes at an all time high. Social care marginalised and the welfare state under attack. So much negative energy.

It’s against this backdrop that the collaboration between Assemble and the residents of Granby takes place. Together they constructed a different narrative. Yes, the residents pushed back – but not in a destructive, hateful way. Instead they applied creativity, a DIY spirit and a willingness to welcome and embrace others. In its way, the Winter Garden is part of an on-going project that stands as an antidote to the fear-mongering and hateful rhetoric of our times. 

The War On Story

 “The storytelling that shapes our world view now is so male dominated it’s creating a singular world view that everyone sees but is not reflective of what the world actually is’. Jenn Duong. Immersive VR Director

Deciding to shoot this project in 360 was an easy decision to make. It’s a great way to reveal space and to capture an environment. But there were other reasons it felt right. Alongside VR, AR and Mixed Reality, 360 has an important role to play in what I call the war on story. 

The stories a society tells itself so often reflect the worldview of those with the power and the money to influence those stories. Through movies, soap operas and advertising we passively soak up these narratives. They move us, entertain us and shape the way we think and feel. At the same time they work to reinforce the legitimacy of certain groups while marginalising and disempowering others. 

Latterly, of course, fuelled by the internet, by social media and by a ‘connected global user base’, these reactionary narratives are under attack. There is a war on story – a desire to replace the tired ‘old truths’ we have been spoon fed for generations and replace them with new stories and different voices. 

Of course if you want to stop hearing a particular story, it’s a good idea to disrupt the way it’s delivered as well. With the development of immersive technologies, such as 360, content creators are more able to escape the straight jacket of linear storytelling and explore new ways of putting the user at the heart of the experience. 

With 360 filmmaking the ‘masterful gaze’ of the Director, is removed, the field of vision is opened out and the audience, in theory, can look wherever they want! This makes it much harder to force them down a narrative corridor. So there is a war on story here too – in the actual way a story is communicated.

I for one welcome the disruption. Story has become a kind of mantra that’s repeated again and again, as if without it we’re lost. And so often the pursuit of it pushes away other qualities that make an experience memorable. So for me the making of the Winter Garden, became an opportunity to explore qualities such as presence, emotional involvement and transparency and see how they play out in this new medium.

Presence

In her article Technologies of Seeing and Technologies of Corporeality, Mandy Rose observes how people experience a ‘documentary’ once they put on a headset. She refers to the quality of presence: “This feeling of being inside the events depicted in VR”.

She also notes that: “Along with presence there often follows an intense emotional involvement  - the participant feels they are witnessing unmediated reality”

This heightened emotional state that comes with presence is not without dangers. Rose quotes the academic Kate Nash who looked at the ethics of mediated presence in her article “Virtual Reality Witness”. Nash observes that: “The simulated nature of the medium and the sense that presence produces of being involved in events rather than just observing them across space and time carries with it a risk of ‘improper distance”

For the filmmaker who wants the audience to ‘get it’ and connect with the meaning of a film, presence, and the heightened sense of proximity it creates, can become a fog that envelops the audience and dulls their ability to perceive what’s going on. In this instance the well trumpeted phrase ‘immersive media’ could have a double meaning: the threat of being submerged or drowning as well as the promise of unlimited horizons and unmediated reality.

For me, as the project developed, an intriguing question was how to avoid ‘improper distance’ so that the audience is able to maintain their objectivity and not get caught up in the ‘illusion’ of being there. With ‘The Winter Garden’ I would argue that there are a number of ‘creative interventions’ that enable us to retain our critical distance:

The most obvious of these ‘interventions’ are the voices of the residents. The flow of observations, anecdotes and insights demand our attention, encouraging us to connect intellectually with the core themes and not get lost in the streets and houses of Granby.

The second is the use of music. An important part of the soundscape, the music  - composed by Jack Wyllie and Will Ward at 19 Sound - underpins the emotional core of the film but also works as a reminder that we are watching an authored film, not unmediated reality. 

The third aspect is the films reluctance to dwell too long in a particular location. Certainly, as befits this type of film making, we linger in spaces more than we would if it was a flat 2D film. But we cut to different scenes quicker than other 360 films might do. Do these ‘cuts’ pull us out of the immersive ‘fog’ and help us maintain a critical distance? I think they do. 

I also hope that this project gently and effectively explores ways we can untether ourselves from traditional storytelling and still create something that’s powerful, emotive and memorable. It’s an attempt to tell a new story. And, at the same time, do this in a way that is fresh and engaging. 

360 and immersive media help us to tell stories differently. It’s vital that we use them to embrace new voices and new perspectives. 

Not drowning but waving

Some friends have come over. We’ve just eaten and we’re now sitting in the front room, while most of the kids are in the back on the PlayStation. We talk about this and that and then I’m asked how are things and what have I been up to. I talk about the Granby film and I’m somewhat amazed that I haven’t in the last three years mentioned it to them. They’re interested. I take the opportunity to show them the film through the headset. It’s fascinating to watch them experience the world all around them – stepping back, turning around, talking us through what they’re seeing. Their reactions make me smile. It’s like they’re walking through a strange big house, at each turn they encounter something or somebody that’s slightly unexpected. They’re youngest has a go too. It’s lovely. He wants to touch everything and everyone. But he can’t see his hands. So he says hello and waves at them instead. From where I’m sitting I can hear the soundtrack.

And then I realise what might be working with the sound and the voices. My rubbish recordings may actually have helped to produce a better connection between the sound and the visuals. Because the voices are clearly not recorded in a studio there is an ambient quality to them that reflects the rooms and environments they were recoded in. There is a synergy going on between the pictures and the sound. Everything a professional sound recordist would aim to obliterate I failed to remove. The clinical perfection of the voice-overs I was hearing in those other films is gone. In its place are the voices of real people, recoded in the same rooms, the same shops and the same streets that I’m looking at in my headset. I don’t think this makes the experience more immersive because hearing voices in my head is thankfully still not a part of my everyday experience. But is does make the experience feel more real.  More immediate.And this realisation helps me appreciate Hazel’s contribution too. Hearing her bold, confident assertions makes me feellike we’re tapping into some found recordings of this great thinker and orator. And it wouldn't have happened this way if I’d know what I was doing. It wasn't by design. It was just chance. 

How a major Museum is breaking down barriers between Science and Art

“Enduring Love was actually a novel wishing to oppose the romantic notion that abstraction and logic and rationality and science in particular was a cold-hearted thing, a myth I think which began with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. We need to reclaim our own sense of the full-bloodedness, the warmth of what's rational”.

(Ian McEwan in conversation with Nima Arkani-Hamed)

Towards the end of last year Tom O’Leary, Director of Learning at the Science Museum Group, sits down with me to discus a very brave concept he is keen to explore. His plan is to bring the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Royal College of Music into the Making the Modern World gallery  - a cathedral like space full of icons - Stephenson’s rocket, Crick and Watsons DNA model, the command module from Apollo 10, Babbage’s Difference Engine to name but a few - and have them perform two of the best loved movements from Holst’s Planet Suite. This would be a surprise performance.  A pop up orchestra, if you like. I was lucky enough to be in a position to kick around some ways we could turn this into a film.

Tom’s idea is part of a broader desire to end the divisive thinking around the Sciences and the Arts.  Both are often seen as polar opposites but as the artist and neuroscientist Dr. Alan Rorie points out: “They are the two great modes of human thought, both pushing the boundaries of what we know and how we know it; what we can perceive and how we perceive it”.

Today there are encouraging signs that innovators and trailblazers are becoming frustrated at the phony divide between the two disciplines. The cool unemotional rationality of science. The emotive and romantic expressiveness of art. And although science and engineering are not often thought of as beautiful that’s changing too.

In 2013 the Science Museum staged a fascinating conversation between the novelist Ian McEwan and the theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed. At one point the novelist recalls the famous remark Rosalind Franklin made in 1953 when she saw Crick's model of a DNA molecule for the first time: “that it was too beautiful not to be true”.  

In response the physicist recalls a lecture given by Leonard Bernstein about Beethoven. Bernstein is talking about the great composers struggle with the opening movement of the 5th Symphony. How to nail it. And notes that Bernstein when describing this struggle “used precisely the same language we use in mathematics and theoretical physics to describe our sense of aesthetics and beauty”. Anyway I’m on board. There’s beauty in Science. In Design. In Mathematics. In Technology.

Jump cut to a few months later. The gallery is full of school children, teachers, parents and tourists. Then suddenly an urgent drumbeat punctures the murmur of footsteps and chitchat. It’s beginning. Violinists emerge from the shadows. The horns leave a lift. Covers are taken off the harps. The conductor Ben Palmer steps on to the podium and the dramatic shock and awe of Mars – the bringer of war – rises in volume and intensity. The public, already in the gallery, are now surrounded by a 90-piece orchestra. This manouvre, worthy of Napoleon, and practiced in detail the night before, is a tour de force. Two minutes later the orchestra moves seamlessly onto Jupiter and the lyrical theme loved by so many.

If you were standing there you couldn’t help but be moved by the emotional force of the music – powerful romantic and emotive – but also by the context. This music, at this time, in this place, in a gallery brimming with extraordinary exhibits representing some of the greatest achievements of mankind in transport, medicine, physics, technology and computing.

So what about the film? What could a video bring to this union? Well, to begin with, video, of course, lies at the precise meeting point of Art and Science. It’s a visceral medium, great at connecting on an emotional level through pictures and sound. At the same time it’s a medium that employs a daunting array of kit that could easily be shown at a Science Museum. Maybe this museum. In this gallery. At some point in the future.

But there’s something else too. Video is synonymous with story. Filmmakers, sitting down on the first day of an edit, have a number of agonising choices in front of them. Where do I start? How do I tell this story? How do I get to the truth? Because at the end of the day, whether we are Beethoven confronting the 5th or a neuroscientist struggling with the unknown, we are all trying to communicate the truth as we see it.

Our final video is the result of the conversations and the thinking that went into telling this particular story. How many performances should we film to make sure we’ve got it? How do we film the exhibits – grab shots during the performance or shoot overnight when the museum’s empty, allowing us to create the gliding movement we’re seeing in our heads? It’s also the result of many days in the edit suite, turning over the options, working through a multitude of choices in order to weave together these elements. The seamless  - I hope - look of the video is the result of careful planning and creative discussion in partnership with the Science Museum, the Royal College of Music and the Director David Betteridge way before the actual shoot.

Anyway, lets leave the last word to a scientist. Here’s Nima Arkani-Hamed again, talking about the quest for story and truth that every scientist goes through:

“I've always thought composers and novelists are probably very close to mathematicians and theoretical physicists psychologically in how they go about things. Perhaps contrary to a certain sort of mythology people don't go to their offices and just churn through equations. You have a certain set of questions you are trying to solve and you have to imagine what the story could possibly be for what the solution is. You have to try to imagine what the sort of global answer could possibly look like – or at least chunks of the global answer. You try on stories – could it work like that? And often because of the underlying rigidity, the same thing that gives rise to the beauty that we talked about, it's beauty because there is a right and wrong. There is some problem that's being solved. If the story is a great story it has a better chance of being right than if it's a crappy story. And sometimes stories are too good to be true and that happens very often. And we try out what could possibly be solutions to the problems and then we have to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as we possibly can. And that's what 99% of our life is about. We try out stories and we prove them wrong”

I can’t remember to be honest the number of cuts we did to get this story right. Through a great deal of hard work, inspiration and the invaluable input from the Science Museum and the RCM we arrived at a cut that I hope does justice to a remarkable event at a singular location. Please take a look.

How we made a film with the Turner Prize winners

We’ve just made a film with Assemble, the extraordinary collective of artists, designers and architects who won the 2015 Turner Prize.

The film looks at the developing relationship between Assemble, the residents of Granby Four Streets in Liverpool and the beautiful products coming out of the workshop they jointly run. Products you can buy from their website, I hasten to add.

The difficult thing was nailing the story. It was a bit like putting up a tent. You look at the instructions. You see what’s come out of the bag. And you realise it’s much bigger and more complex than you initially thought.

The story behind this years Turner Prize is one of ‘bloody minded’ residents and creative visionaries working together in the service of a community that’s been under siege for decades. In 1981, after years of overt racism and neglect, the patience of Toxteth had run out. The people rioted. Afterwards things got even worse. Wave after wave of urban planning seemed to have only one objective: demoralise the people, tear it all up and start all over again. (Ok, that’s three objectives but you get my drift). The thing is, the people who lived there didn’t want to start all over again. This was their home. Jump forward thirty-five years and the residents of Granby Four Streets are already turning things around. When Assemble arrive, the once beaten up, bullied and neglected neighbourhood has become the fabric they can work on together.

My journey started on a bright day in November a couple of weeks before the Turner Prize was announced. I was meeting Lewis Jones and Fran Edgerley of Assemble at their studio in Stratford to discus a film. Assemble wanted something that would focus on the workshop and get people excited by the products. And for good reason. Assemble are nothing if not altruistic and the money going into the workshop goes back into the community and the project.

Great stuff. Although I could see a problem. The Guardian quoted someone from Assemble saying they are “sort of architects, sort of not, sort of maybe”. I’m sure this is a reflection of their self-effacing approach to life and work. But if I wasn’t careful I’d be making a “sort of, sort of not, sort of maybe advert”. Assemble naturally shy away from anything that’s superficial or glossy. So do I. I loathe the advertising industry and the out-dated dinosaurs and concepts still lumbering around. Everything is about the big idea. In this world it’s easy for anything that’s real, authentic or genuinely insightful to be replaced by lazy stereotypes, beautiful cinematography and phoney emotional moments.

Personally I believe what makes a film great is its story. And to truly believe and trust that story it needs to be based on real experiences and real insights. People and places you can recognise, identify with and like. Otherwise it becomes just another advert selling just another lie. In contrast I want to deliver something that’s timely, relevant and authentic.

Six days later and I’m in Liverpool to do some research. I’m having a breakfast meet with Fran before she walks me round the neighbourhood. We talk about the film. We agree that, although it’s about the workshop, the heart of it should be the people who work there and the residents who’ve been its inspiration throughout. Maybe it is an advert. Maybe it’s not. But it’s a film with a great back-story — ‘stubborn and audacious’ residents imbued with a spirit of making, who chose creativity as their weapon of choice.

Afterwards Fran shows me the workshop and introduces me to some key people in the community. All of them are happy to talk and welcome me into their homes. They tell me how they fought back against the insidious attempts to nudge them out. They planted gardens in the pavement. They painted murals. They campaigned. They reclaimed their streets and ushered in Assemble, who immediately ‘got them’ and worked with them as partners to refurbish the homes.

Despite all this I was struggling to construct an elegant visual ‘fit’ between the workshop and the community. And then finally I met Eleanor, a razor sharp woman with a great sense of humour, who’s lived in Granby since the mid 70s. Eleanor talked about the workshop in a way that reminded me of something I’d read previously. In the early days you could walk into the workshop — a converted newsagents by the way — and upstairs there would be artists creating beautiful herringbone fabrics while downstairs Assemble and the residents would pass around the biscuits, talk, laugh and share ideas. The workshop had become a social and creative hub.

And for me this is what the film became. A film about people. About hopes and dreams. About strength and determination. About making. About creativity. And the DIY spirit which Assemble recognised and loved and which is now continuing with the workshop. This space, once a functional necessity — making the tables, chairs, fireplaces, door knobs and lampshades that replaced the ones stripped out from the homes — is now one of the most vibrant legacies of their relationship. Based on designs generated by Assemble it employs local artists, trains young residents and produces things that are delightful and useful.

What I hope the film shows is that Assemble and the people of Granby are re-imagining what a neighbourhood can look like. The 15 or so members who make up the collective are brilliant ideas people who, amongst other things, love to collaborate with communities. They turn cities into more human, inspiring and enjoyable places to live.

The film’s perhaps longer than my friends at Assemble wanted. But it’s a film that’s enriched by the experiences and anecdotes of real people. Their history. Their story. And hopefully a happy ending which has grown out of so much hardship.

To see and buy the beautiful, handmade products made at the workshop please do visit the website. www.GranbyWorkshop.com

Carousels and Chocolate Mosques. How Victim Support is using film to raise awareness and change attitudes.

I’ve been taking a more than usual interest in the Great British Bake off since making a film for Victim Support that addresses the terrible impact of Islamophobia on young people. 

A couple of weeks ago I, and around 14 million others, tuned in to see Nadia Hussain, an unassuming and hugely likeable mother of three, fight off her nerves and two other contestants to win the much sought after prize. But prior to her victory, Nadia was generating a great deal of media interest for other reasons too. 

Nadia had said she was worried that “perhaps people would look at me, a Muslim in a headscarf, and wonder if I could bake”. She needn’t have worried. Her show stopping triple - tiered lemon drizzle wedding cake was described by Mary Berry as “stunning…sheer perfection”. And indeed it was. A delectable, pristine testament to her Bangladeshi background and her love of British cooking. 

She had many fans. David Cameron was rooting for her: “so cool under pressure” he told reporters prior to his speech at the Conservative party conference. (By a strange coincidence the Bake Off final and the conference were happening on the same day). And more than one commentator has viewed the show as a kind of TV land metaphor for the sort of egalitarian, big society thing the Prime Minister still likes to talk about. One nation under a marquee. 

Since her victory the papers have devoted a great deal of column inches to what it all means. On the nasty side, the Sun and the Daily Mail were already sneering at an imagined PC agenda running riot at the BBC. An agenda that was presumably letting too many undesirables into the tent. Taking our jobs away. The Daily Mail ‘content provider’ Amanda Platell claimed that the chocolate carousel prepared by a white contestant was bound to fail when up against the Bake Off teams PC bias. Perhaps “if she’d made a chocolate mosque, she’d have stood a better chance”.  

And now with the final on its way, poor Amanda had to endure the presence of a ‘new man’, a ‘gay doctor’ and a ‘Muslim mum’. Presumably the icing on the cake for these playground bullies and professional hate mongers was that Nadia wears the hijab. 

This mindless resistance to any kind of positive representation for Muslims is deeply saddening as it feeds the prejudices and mindset of a great many. In London alone hate crimes against Muslims have risen by 70% in the last year. This includes anything from verbal abuse and street harassment, to vandalism, arson and physical assault. Around 60% of victims are Muslim women wearing the Hijab.

Against this backdrop of rising islamophobia the charity Victim Support recently joined forces with Faith Matters and Tell MAMA to make a film for and about young Muslims. Victim Support is an independent charity for victims of crime in England and Wales. It’s Suffering in Silence report draws attention to the fact that most victims of hate crime do not report their experience and often endure the abuse as part of everyday life. To counter this, the film would offer young Muslims, valuable insights and advice.

Why film? The client team knew that young people love to experience real life stories and watch videos about people they can identify with. Film is great at telling authentic stories that connect emotionally. For this reason alone it has an impact way beyond the printed word. If you want to raise awareness, change attitudes and make a difference film is superior to any other medium.

I was lucky enough to be asked to help out with the project. The film we made looks at Islamophobia through the candid and heartfelt contributions of nine young Muslims. Their unscripted insights are woven together and explore a number of themes that Victim Support unearthed during extensive interviews in Rotherham, Blackburn and London before the shoot. They make it clear what Islamophobia is and what it feels like to be on the receiving end of it. They also suggest ways you can cope, and what you can do to get support. This is ultimately a positive film featuring people the audience can identify with.

An important aspect of this project was communicating a real sense of the contributors’ personalities. A mix of individuals with different characters, interests and hobbies. In this way it subverts the mainstream media’s tendency to de - humanise and stereotype. Like Nadia, we recognise in them the same hopes, dreams and aspirations that we all have. In a media vacuum where Muslim voices are rarely heard here are nine young people cutting through the nonsense and the bullshit.

I hope the film does some good. It was completed before the Conservative party conference in Manchester. Cameron’s speech there addressed the need for equality of opportunity. Whatever your colour. Whatever your religion. But in the same speech he also proposed that all faith based supplementary schools - Jewish, Muslim or other – should submit themselves to inspection as a way of tackling extremism. Here Cameron painted a lurid picture of Muslim madrassa schools, where pupils have their “heads filled with poison and their hearts filled with hate”. This was all that was needed to fuel the crude, anti Muslim discourse of the Sun and the Daily Mail. The Mail made sure the narrative was all about ‘Islamist extremism’ and the ‘fight for our existence’. The Suns big, bold, inescapable headline was simply ‘Madrass Kicker’.

Clearly there is more work to be done in order to promote a more inclusive and diverse society. And some sections of the press need to take a good hard look at themselves. Encouragingly H&M have just produced a commercial which features, all be it briefly, a British Muslim woman wearing a Hijab.

As we see her standing in the doorway of a trendy shop, Iggy Pop’s distinctive voice over tells us this is chic. Along with Nadia’s victory, this is the kind of thing that ultimately defeats the people who’s heads are “filled with poison”, who are scared of diversity and intolerant of different faiths and cultures. Let’s hope there’s more to come.