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News > Collaboration & co-production: how young people shaped our Big Give campaign
Nov. 24, 2021

Collaboration & co-production: how young people shaped our Big Give campaign

How young people helped us develop photography and film for our winter fundraising campaign.

By Team Settle

Support Settle in the Big Give Christmas Challenge 2021

Please click here to visit Settle’s Big Give campaign page and help them support more young people next year.

At Settle we are proud to work with an inspiring community of young people and we strive to create opportunities for them to shape our work and tell their stories. Enabling young people with lived experience of the issues that Settle tackles to use our platform is key to our philosophy of putting Young People First. 

As in all cases when young people are invited to be involved in projects with Settle, we compensate them for their time by paying the London Living Wage for a full day opportunity or higher for opportunities that take an hour or two. We also cover transport costs and for full days we can contribute towards food as well.

Most recently we have co-produced our Christmas campaign by inviting young graduates from our Programme to be involved in a variety of paid roles, including featuring in our campaign photography, participating in a creative workshop and co-producing our campaign film.

In September we invited young people to be involved in our campaign photography, which involved shots of them in their home and surrounding areas, chatting with their Settle Programme Officer (PO) and doing their hobbies. This is a paid opportunity for the young person to catch up with their PO in person and they get to keep digital copies of the fantastic photos, taken by Benoît Grogan-Avignon.

Bethlehem and Holly Smiling 2021 © Benoit Grogan Avignon 1

In October we ran a workshop, inviting young people to come into our office at Tobacco Dock for a creative session to map out what they thought our campaign film should look like. This involved activities to prompt thinking about themselves before and after receiving support through the Settle Programme, as well as an opportunity to show their favourite film clips and think about what visual effects, backing music and colour schemes that resonated with them most. We provided lots of snacks and drinks to keep the energy high throughout the two-hour session!

Big-Give-Workshop

We left the creative workshop with a clear idea of who, how and what we wanted to film. Tom Edkins, freelance video producer, seamlessly weaved together the young people’s ideas into a script. We sent the script to the young people to feedback and ensure they felt they were being accurately depicted in the film, then we were ready to go.

In November we began filming! We filmed over two days as we had 5 young people interested in the film process, 4 of whom wanted to star in the film, including one young person who also assisted with a filming session as they had an interest in colour grading and film editing. The fifth young person spent a full day as Assistant Director, as they are interested in film production. 

Creating these paid opportunities for young people to be both in front of and behind the camera was really important because they enabled the young people to tell their stories and build their employment experience. It was also really special to see young people who have graduated from the Settle Programme getting to know each other.

Image-from-iOS

After Tom drafted the film, it was sent to the group of young people for feedback and it received their approval. We celebrated by holding a Launch Lunch at Settle’s offices, inviting the young people back for a film screening over pizza with the rest of the Settle team and The Lightbulb Trust, supportive funders of Settle’s work.

One young person said:

“Thanks Evie and Shayane for organising it all and everyone who attended. It was a lovely afternoon, I really enjoyed watching the Settle film and the pizza was delicious. I hope we can have more celebrations or workshops in the future.”

Another said:

“Thank you to everyone at Settle for continuing to change the lives of so many, it’s been an inspirational journey being able to work with you on this project and of course coming along to the pizza wrap party, thanks everyone!”

A huge thank you to Tom Edkins, Benoît Grogan-Avignon and graduates Bethlehem, Jade, Jessica, Jermaine, Mickal and Serina for their time working on Settle’s Christmas campaign.

The Big Give Christmas Challenge 2021 runs from midday on Tuesday 30th November to midday on Tuesday 7th December. Your donations will be match-funded, meaning we can continue to support even more young people next year. If you’d like to support us, click here to donate.