Closing the circle

The meeting last night (Thursday, 21 October 2010) was an incredible event to witness.  Our ward 10 group organised a showing of our media productions in the Recreation Hall in that area.  In order to make the evening a little fun, dance groups were organised to perform at the beginning and end of the meeting.  As a result, our audience was even larger than anticipated.  The dance groups consisted of youth from the area, and their friends and parents came to support them and attend the meeting.  It was quite a large and lively crowd that viewed our media productions as a result of this.  About a third of the crowd were youths of the area (ranging from about 3 years old to 23 years old).  The rest of the crowd were mostly concerned citizens and parents of the youths.

The reaction to our various media productions was a little unexpected, although it shouldn't have been.  Most of the youth were so impressed with the fact that pictures and videos of people they knew were being screened, that they barely listened to what any of the pieces were actually about.  Each familiar face was greeted with laughter and yells of approval.  As a result, the audio was barely audible.  The Active Voices group felt rather uplifted by the experience.  It was general agreed that although not great attention was given to the message of the pieces, the uproar over them has created quite an incentive for people to find them later on.  For this purpose we have left DVDs at various points in the area so that those interested can find them and we made sure this was known to those at the meeting.  Hopefully word will spread from there and the media productions will get a wide audience base.

Our message was not completely lost in the tumult, however.  Afterwards, the audience was invited to the microphone to speak.  The strongest point that came from these dialogues was a need for the community to pull together and begin to resolve their own problems within the community - one of our own media production points.  Much was said about individuals in the community needing to affect change in their community, to take action themselves.  Overall, the meeting was encouraging and their were calls from a few people in attendance for there to be more meetings and more report backs to the community.  If the course were to continue, there is great potential in the community to work with.