Brixton Reel Film Festival 2016

Evaluation Report

Draft 3

Contents

Acknowledgements and Summaryp.3

Aims and objectives of the festivalp.4

What we didp.6

Evaluation datap.9

Conclusion and recommendations for the futurep.14

Appendicesp.16

(It moved me to think about my mental health issues in ways I never thought about before.)

Acknowledgements

The festival could not have been delivered without the hard work of the Festival Steering Group Team (Cary Sawhney, Nancy Liscano, Andre Martey, Declan McGill, Johanna Thompson, Natalie Sutherland, Any Florin, Ever Gutierrez, Gary Wyles, Sarah Corlett, Ambesit Tekeste, Beverley Randell); Mosaic Clubhouse and Telefono de la Esperanza in delivering and promoting the event.

Thanks also to contributions from staff at London Borough of Lambeth and Southwark Communications teams, volunteers, service users, caterers, Lambeth and Southwark psychological therapy services and the Lambeth Early Intervention and Prevention Service (LEIPS).

Summary

NHS Lambeth CCG, London Borough of Lambeth and London Borough of Southwark worked in partnership with Batty Mama, Mosaic Clubhouse, The Dragon Cafe, AZ Magazine, Wotever World, Urban World, LGBT Underground, UK Black Pride, SH24, South London & Maudsley, Certitude, Cinema Museum, Karibu Centre, ImagineAsia, Mosaic Clubhouse, Two Brewers and Telefono de la Esperanza UK to hold a 8th outreach project in November 2016 involving film, wellbeing and mental health for African-Caribbean, Spanish speaking and African-Caribbean LGBTQ+ communities. The project was part of an anti-stigma campaign and aimed to tie into the national Time to Change[footnoteRef:2] anti-stigma mental health campaign as part of Lambeths and Southwarks Wellbeing Programme. ImagineAsia Ltd were commissioned to help develop the project concept, identify films & arts and organise the festival. Films screened explored the BME experience in relation to mental health, wellbeing, mental health issues, caring but also focused on building self-esteem, generating debate and community empowerment. [2: See http://www.time-to-change.org.uk ]

The festivals reach grew in 2016, both in Lambeth and Southwark. Over 768 people attended the festival over the three screening events, including people who use mental health services, Lambeth and Southwark residents, representatives from the London Boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark Lambeth CCG, voluntary sector and South London and Maudsley NHS Trust.

The events were a fun and inclusive way of promoting mental wellbeing and de-stigmatising mental ill health in communities. The events conveyed messages around good mental health and wellbeing, recovery, and empowerment. The three events in the festival were open to all and they were free admission.

Aims of the festival

The aims of the festival were:

1) To use film and arts as a medium to help de-stigmatise the concept of mental health particularly targeting in 2016 the African-Caribbean, Latin American and Black LGBTQ+ communities;

2) To use film and arts to promote recovery and hope for people experiencing mental ill health in those communities;

3) To broaden understanding of mental health and wellbeing in communities, and help to empower those communities to talk about mental health, take action to look after their own wellbeing and others and to seek early help from services

4) Celebrating the unique cultural offer each community has to bring and celebrating their contribution to community and individual wellbeing

5)Contribute to delivery of the recommendations in the Lambeth Black Health and Wellbeing Commission

http://lambethcollaborative.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ENC-4.4-BHWB-Commission-Final-Report2-PDF-June-2014.pdf

The Target Audience

Everyoneliving and workingin Lambeth, with, or withoutmental health problems, (but especially BAME communities), people aged 15 yearsand above, and mental health service users and carers.

This year the project targeted :

African-Caribbean people and young people

African-Caribbean LGBTQ+ people

Latin American communities

But is an inclusive event open to all.

(A beautiful and incredibly special space for celebration of Queer People of Colour so valuable and hope to see more like this.)

The Brixton Reel project was aimed at everyoneliving and workingin Lambeth and Southwark, whether or not they had mental health issues. As well as audiences attending the film screenings it was expected that even greater numbers of local people positively engaged with the festivals publicity (including radio interviews including on Colourful Radio and BBC Radio London, Spanish adverts in the Latin American London press, 5,000 flyers, e-flyers, Facebook, twitter and a festival website).

The following recommendations made in the evaluation report of the Brixton Reel Festival project in 2015 were considered in the planning and development of the 2016 events and these were addressed as set out in Table 1.

Table 1: Acting on the lessons learnt from 2015

Recommendations from 2015

Actions taken in 2016

Choose a more cost effective venue for LGBTQ+ event

Offered Two Brewers (Clapham) for minimal cost. Significant cost saving from Vauxhall Tavern.

Make events more interactive

More interactive social media coverage and debate generated in 2016 thanks to outreach efforts of Johanna Thompson and Andre Martey.

Continue to secure Latin American films

Mexican comedy with mental health subtext was extremely popular with South American communities over 250 people attended.

For a Portuguese speaking event to take place diversify venues to target different audiences.

Event was initiated at AToca restaurant, but festival funding was not enough to develop this event further in 2016.

After recognising high need for work with new African-Caribbean LGBTQ+ in 2015 to work with these communities in

Another part of the Borough

Event developed in South of Borough (Clapham) attracted new Black LGBTQ+ partners and audience. There was a significantly younger under 25 audience attending including African-Caribbean Transgender people

African-Caribbean heterosexual event at Karibu Centre had poor disability access and needed more interactive panel debate with the audience on mental health and wellbeing topics.

The Karibu used again in 2016 but event placed downstairs to allow full disability access (toilets still a problem). The panel debate after the screenings were very interactive between audience and panel around wellbeing and empowerment issues in 2016.

Try organise events for refugee/ migrant communities in Southwark.

There wasnt funding in Southwark for an event this year with refugee venues in the Borough.

What we did

Three film events were held at Karibu Education Centre, Two Brewers and Cinema Museum between 12-18 November 2016, to coincide with ongoing awareness of World Mental Health Day and Black History Month. These were funded by Lambeth CCG, London Borough of Lambeth and in kind funding from Mosaic Clubhouse, Certitude, Dragon Cafe and Telefono de la Esperanza. The events were free and open to all. The films aimed to be appealing to specific BME groups in order to engage them in discussions and thoughts about mental wellbeing and mental illness.

The first event on Saturday 12 November, at the popular Cinema Museum, was the UK Premiere of the Mexican box-office hit Get Married If You Can (Casese Quien Pueda), which attracted a diverse Latin American community that booked out the venue to such a level that additional chairs had to be found. The film explored a number of wellbeing issues and was introduced in Spanish and English by Telefono de la Esperanza UKs Nancy Liscano and Anamaria Florin (formerly of Southwark Council) who discussed the 5 Ways To Wellbeing and relevant wellbeing themes in the film. After the film there was another discussion about mental wellbeing and then followed a highly popular introduction to Salsa dance class, which was very popular with the audience and showed the value of exercise, living in the now, and socialising in terms of wellbeing.

The second event was held on a Thursday 17th November at the normally mostly White Gay mens venue of Two Brewers in Clapham and the event was entitled Too Black Too Queer this title was based on an experience of one of the organisers Tara Brown who had been told during her young life that she was too black and too queer and seemed a point of re-appropriating and making positive of such negative attitudes. This strong, stylish brand was very popular with the target community. Last years first outreach into the Black LGBTQ+ and particularly Black Transgender community at Vauxhall Tavern highlighted just how little work had been done with Black LGBTQ+ communities in Lambeth and indeed UK-wide and also how at risk these communities were to poor mental health and suicide risk. Partly because of its innovative image and partly because of the strength of community partners to champion the wellbeing cause the event attracted a mix of very high quality young performers and established acts including IT young African-Caribbean Gay Rapper Karnage, Travis and many others. There was also a screening of new short films (at least three were UK premieres). All the films were on mental wellbeing and empowerment themes.

There was also poetry recitals and three talks on the 5 Ways to Wellbeing. The event attracted a majorly African-Caribbean LGBTQ+ (including women and Transgender audience most for the first time attending an essential