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Reflective Questions

Which part of Unit X have you found the most useful? Why? How? So what? I found the in-person sessions with my group to be the times when we've worked most effectively; we did more work on average in the two hours in the same room when in two days over messenger and teams. I found this interesting as we have all had to get used to communicating digitally over the last year, but it doesn't come close to physical proximity in terms of efficient and effective communication and planning.

Which part of Unit X has been the least interesting? Why? Have you learned anything from that? About yourself? About others? About how you like to learn? Personally, I found the working from failure workshop to be the least useful. I have spent a long time in counselling assessing and working through my own issues surrounding failure and perfectionism, and this workshop attempted to teach me methods which differed greatly from the hard work I've done to overcome my issues and thereby triggered some anxiety I have around perfectionism and performance in school and university. Despite this, I did come away knowing more about myself, specifically about how I prefer to keep personal growth and the things I learn in counselling separate from the classroom.

What were some of your most challenging moments and what made them so? One of the most challenging things I had to do was in the organisation of the virtual screening room. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to get a budget approved in time, but I am still proud of the work I did in attempting to organise a film festival. Furthermore, I can use these skills and gained knowledge in the future, whether we end up putting on the festival in the summer, or I end up working in cinema and film programming.

What is the most important thing you learned personally? The most important skill I developed through this process was organisation and time management. As a filmmaker, I normally focus on directing and sound design and leave production and management to someone else in my crew. I believe that, now, I have the beginnings of the organisational skills needed to run a film set, which I hope will serve me well in the future.

What will you take forward after Unit X ends? Why? How will you apply your learning? Why? I think that the biggest thing I will take forward is my knowledge of my own skills and abilities. Because the unit focussed on creativity and wellbeing, I made sure to assess and acknowledge my own wellbeing throughout, and, in the process, learned how I can throw myself into a task I wouldn't think I could do, such as organizing a film festival. In addition, I learned to trust my own ideas more, as I didn't have confidence in the idea of a film festival, but I ended up combining it with another person in the group and it became the project that half the group ended up working towards.

What caused you the most effort during Unit X? Why? Did it differ from your usual practice? How? Have you taken anything from that? The most effort definitely came from the collaborative process. Normally on my course, I am working with a maximum of four other people, so collaboration on this scale was very overwhelming to me and left me with a lot of new skills in terms of working as part of a team and leading one.

Has your expected outcome of Unit X differed from your expectations? How? Why? I'm not sure what I was expecting coming into this process as the description of the unit was purposefully vague to encourage creative thinking and expression. I expected I would make a short film or documentary and write an essay explaining my process, as that is what I'm used to. In actuality, I co-founded a festival and planned an entire film festival, taking films from small creators and organizing a group watch of an important piece of LGBT+ cinema, despite the fact that the festival couldn't be fully executed in the end.

When did collaborative communications fall short of the expectations? How? Why? What did you do to overcome it? Collaborative communication was definitely difficult throughout the process due to the restrictions put in place by the pandemic. We overcame this by opening multiple lines of communication through messenger, teams, and email, as well as meeting once a week in person for strategy and planning sessions.

What most got in the way of your progress? Why? How? The biggest thing that affected our progress was the time limit. Many of us had other projects to complete and, with the deadline quickly approaching, started rushing leading to decreased quality in work and artists feeling rushed or pressured. It was because of this that we decided to postpone the festival until we have the submission and time to create an event we are all proud of.

How have you collaborated on Unit X? What has been your experience of collaboration? How has it made you feel? Why? I have collaborated heavily on this unit from the outset. We met for the first time in the second week of the Unit and decided to work together on the festival almost immediately. We delegated tasks to each other and created resources for each other to use. For example, Ana created a sheet of useful graphics for marketing including fonts and HTML codes, which I used to create the FilmFreeway page to encourage film submissions. The fact that the majority of the team has been so supportive of each other and collaborated so effectively has definitely made me feel positive towards collaboration in the future, as I have had bad experiences in the past with poor communication and not respecting each other's creative visions for projects.

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Next Steps

I do wish we had been able to put the festival on in time for the assessment, but hopefully we will be able to come together over the summer and hold Fragments Fest so that all our hard work hasn't gone to waste, especially since our Instagram is finally starting to gain traction.

I decided to push the deadline on the FilmFreeway back a month to allow anyone who wanted to submit the oppertunity, that way, if we do decide to hold the festival in the summer, we'll have a bank of films to work with.

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Deadlines and Submissions

Unfortunately, we failed to get the number of sumbissions necessary in order to complete the festival in time - likely due to the fact the planning was rushed and we simply didn't have time to get the word out, especially as most festivals have at least two months worth of time to submit and we had less than half that.

Because of this, we decided as a group to postpone the festival until we can get enough art and film submissions; at this point, we may be able to meet in person for the festival and possibly hold it in a physical space.

I sent out an email to those who had submitted via FilmFreeway to let them know that the festival was being postponed but we would still love to use their films if and when the festival actually happens.

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Problem solving and Plan B

I communicated with the Fragments Festival team that we would be unable to center our festival around one central film through the virtual screening room. After some discussion I had the idea to watch a film through Netflix Party - a piece of software I had become familiar with as a user during lockdown as a way to watch films with my friends.

The positive to this is that Netflix has a huge selection of independent LGBT cinema, as well as useful built-in features such as subtitles and the ability to pause for intermission. In addition, the UI involves a chat function that allows people to talk via written chat during the film, encouraging community and an active audience.

On the other hand, the downside would be that it limits the audience to those who have access to Netflix, which isn't actually too limiting because it is the most widely used streaming service in the UK by far.

My suggestion for a film would be Tucked! (Patterson, 2018), as it is an underrated and largely unknown British LGBT drama which deals with issues of identity, self-love, and acceptance while celebrating the art of drag in a uniquely British way.

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Organisation

In order to put on a large scale film - our choice was Tangerine - we would need to join Filmbank Media, which, as it turns out, has a £150 joining fee, on top of the £85 screening fee, which was just not in our budget.

I did some research and asked my old boss at the Rotherham Underground cinema, who said that if we joined Cinema For All, they would wave the £150 joining fee. So I delved further into their membership scheme and found that the only tiers that offer this cost £95 to join, which is still out of our budget.

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Film planning and callouts

I put out a call for filmmakers and artists on FilmFreeway - a website I had previously used as a filmmaker - in order to reach a wider group for submissions. To make it more eyecatching, I collaborated with the graphic designers in our group to create an icon and cover image.

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Planning and booking guests

Over Easter break, I've been in contact with the Lemon House Theatre Company. I found the through an article written by co-founder Jennifer Cerys about the fetishization of LGBT people' struggles on stage, as well as another article about the lack of representation for queer POC and women behind the scenes of theatre production.

They agreed to give a talk/workshop on queer theatre as part of the festival.

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Week 4 - Call outs and Planning

We decided to invite LGBT creators from Uni and the Greater Manchester area to submit short films, photographs, visual art pieces, poems, short stories, etc. We plan to combine these and showcase them through an online film festival and virtual art gallery, designed by Louise, an interior design student.

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Week 4 - Planning

In my previous experiencing with the Young Programmers Scheme with Cinema For All, I had some knowledge on film programming, so I logged onto Filmbank Media to research the pricing structure.

I found a new service called the Virtual Screening Room, which works as a virtual space to show films for only the same price as the indoor screening price.

We looked through the catalogue of LGBT cinema and found our picks. We discussed wanting a film that the audience couldn't stream online (e.g. on Netflix) and was a 15 certificate or lower to open the screening to younger people in the community, including students at Stockport college and sixth forms.

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Week 3 - Collaberation

This week, I talked to other people in my group about each of our ideas. When I came into the room, the group was discussing an idea to put together a festival of events educating and celebrating the LGBT community in Stockport. We discussed how my idea of a film festival could work as the central event for an online festival celebrating the art and collaboration within the local LGBT community.

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Week 3 - Ideas

I had the idea to put on a one day film festival, either outside in stockport, or digitally.

I contacted someone I knew from a Young Programmers group I participated in with Cinema For All, who used to run an independent cinema in Rotherham for information on the cost.

Reflecting on the information from him, I realised that putting on an in-person festival would be unfeasable within the time period, so my next step is to look into liscensing and copyright laws on streaming websites such as twitch to see if that could be a viable option, or if I need to scrap the project all together.

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This is something I wrote recently for your4 about lgbt representation in general, and how constant negative representation can affect mental health.

Does Gay Still Mean Happy? LGBT+ Representation in Film - Alys

Does Gay Still Mean Happy? - LGBT+ Representation in Television

It’s fair to say that, over recent years, LGBT representation in media has exploded; from big budget blockbusters like Call Me By Your Name, to award-winning programmes with wide reach like Orange is the New Black, but is this representation always fair?

According to GLAAD’s report, Where are We on TV (2020), just 9.5% of recurring television characters were LGBTQ, with these numbers heavily skewing towards cisgender gay characters; lesbians take up around 30%, bisexuals 28%, and transgender people came in at 8%, including just two non-binary recurring characters over all platforms. Even if these statistics reflected the population, LGBTQ characters are less likely to appear on light-hearted shows, are put through harsher situations, and are often killed off to advance the plot.

There is an argument to be had on whether it is important for queer representation to go through this dramatic phase in order to expose problems for people in the community (such as the AIDS crisis, transphobia, and issues around coming out) before moving to where cisgender heterosexual people are as the default setting for a character. There are many shows such as Pose and It’s a Sin (catch up on All4 now) which do a great job of representing the genuine struggles within our community, both to people outside the community, and to the lucky few of us who grew up without going through these experiences. My worry, however, is that some of the viewership of these shows comes from a morbid curiosity from conservative communities, and without the counterpart of light-hearted comedies with unburdened gay and trans people, young people who are new to the community see only fear and hatred, and become even more scared and ashamed of who they are. In my opinion, a perfect form of alternative representation is Claire in Derry Girls - being a lesbian is a key part of her identity but it’s not all she is. Claire is a character with flaws and quirks and, despite going to a Catholic school in 1990’s Ireland, she is free to openly and unashamedly be herself with the love and support of her best friends.

On the bright side, there is a revolution occurring on kids’ TV. Looking back, I can’t think of a single outwardly LGBTQ character on the television I watched as a kid in the 00’s (outside of RTD’s Doctor Who era with an obvious side eye to Luke on Sarah Jane Adventures), with some networks going as far as pushing characters together to prove they weren’t gay (looking directly at Disney’s treatment of Kelsey and Ryan in High School Musical on this one). Non-binary icon and children’s tv creator Rebecca Sugar has already made such huge strides as a key force behind the inclusion of same-sex relationships on Adventure Time, and Steven Universe which features a married lesbian couple as one of the main characters (I promise that sentence makes sense within the context of the show)! Unfortunately, kid’s tv flips the script on other shows and features a disproportionately small amount of male gay and bisexual representation, perhaps due to the fact that male same-sex relationships have always been seen as more inherently sexual, and therefore cause more of a stir in conservative parenting communities.

The big issue that seems to still be highly prevalent in this new age of queer liberation, is how trans and non-binary people are disproportionately underrepresented. As well as LGBTQ people of colour, with disabilities, and bisexual people who actually use the word ‘bisexual’ rather than the common “I’m just attracted to people” that we have all become so accustomed to.

Hopefully this is a step in the right direction, and, in 20 more years, my kids will grow up watching LGBT people like their mum on every channel.

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Week 2 - Research

I've been researching LGBTQ groups in Stockport to see what kind of services and events they put on for the local community, and brainstorming ways my skills and experience can fit into that.

I have found two main groups - Forward LGBT+ and LGBT+ PLUS - which both opperate out of Stockport. It seems that their in person work has been limited, but both have been able to move online, especially LGBT+ PLUS who had a large number of events through LGBT History Month in Febuary.

If lockdown restrictions limit my ability to work in person or physically with the community, I could use the online community LGBT+ PLUS has created.