The black kites circled overhead as my jetlagged brain tried to process the fact that I was now in Bangladesh. Here I was hurtling through the hectic streets of Dhaka to the symphony of car horns for the second time in four months. Last time it was to run ‘Zero Budget and Zero Experience’ filmmaking workshops with young people from the International Children’s Film Festival. We were focusing on making films on phones and showing them how to teach these skills to other young people in their respective hometowns. I have always wanted to come to Bangladesh. I toured Pakistan with the Natural Theatre company many years ago and run citizenship filmmaking workshops in Cairo for six consecutive years with my company Big State and have recently been involved in the wonderful Camara Chica project in Cuba. So, I relished the vibrancy of this bustling city crammed with 18 million people.
The last workshops went very well, and so I was asked back. This time I was to work with three different groups over six days. The first group was called EDGE (English and Digital for Girls Education). Launched in 2012, in partnership with BRAC Bangladesh, as English and IT for Adolescents (EITA), the project has now further developed into English and Digital for Girls Education, which aims to improve the life prospects of adolescent girls in socioeconomically marginalised communities in Bangladesh. I was looking forward to meeting these young women from all over the country. All these workshops were to take place at the British Council Offices on Fuller Road, and the girls arrived on the first morning in their lavishly coloured clothes and nervous smiles excited to start the workshop but obviously apprehensive. My workshops incorporate many theatre exercises that work well to relax the group and help them to work together and come up with ideas. Once the first warm-up exercise was over the room was full of relaxed, smiling and confident young women ready to learn and be creative.
The day consisted of a combination of technical learning about filmmaking alongside practical assignments to put these skills into practice. The concept was to provide training for young people who may have no experience in filmmaking and no equipment other than their phone to empower them to make films about their lives and give them a voice. The training starts with the basics and gradually drip-feeds the knowledge during the two days so as not to overwhelm the participants. They carried out various film assignments with different objectives during the first day and then made a two-minute film combining all these skills on the second. As the ‘Women of the World' Festival was in full swing in Dhaka, I decided to give the Edge group the theme of issues that women face in Bangladesh for their films. They approached this task with such maturity and enthusiasm and came up with four short films in severe matters on which they were very keen to bring awareness.
These were teenage brides, stalking by men who would not take no for an answer, inappropriate behaviour by male teachers and favouritism of sons over daughters. These points were made stronger with passion and humour. It was a real pleasure working with this group of inspiring young women, and I hope they use these skills to continue to make short films to tell the world about their lives to give an insight into this beautiful country. I learnt later that the EDGE project had been rolled out to Nepal and India and I was speaking to the coordinator about running similar workshops there, which would be amazing.
The fourth and fifth days were with British Council employees and had more of an emphasis on content for social media. The British Council employees came from many different departments, and they hoped to use the skills learned in this course to document events and publicise opportunities in their departments to support the work of the marketing team. The training in February had been such a success that the marketing department had asked for more employees to have the opportunity to do the workshop. I met one of the participants from the last seminar who told me it was the best workshop she had ever done. Well, that was nice to hear! It was evident that the group enjoyed the two days. It was not only a welcome change to their regular days but also inspired as to how they can use their newfound filmmaking skills to show the world what great opportunities there are at the British Council. There was a lot of laughter and humour over the workshop, and we found a new romantic lead for the Bangladesh Film Industry in the Arts department!
Then came the Active Citizens group. The British Council helps citizens and institutions contribute to a more inclusive, open and prosperous society. They partner with civil society organisations, government ministries and institutions in the UK and Bangladesh to deliver high-quality programmes. Active Citizens programme aims to bring about sustainable social change within communities by establishing a global network of leaders. The purpose is to increase the contribution of community leaders towards achieving sustainable development both locally and globally. The group was a broad range of young people from across the country with one thing in common. A passion and enthusiasm to support their local communities. Like the Edge girls, the group had so many ideas and opinions, and when they started to make films about life in Bangladesh, it was a real insight into life across the country. Many of the subjects concerned attitudes towards poverty. This country faces numerous challenges of all sorts, but with these young people engaged across the region, I am hopeful that they will start to instigate small changes in their locality and hopefully they will be able to document those to tell the world. At the end of each workshop, the group wanted a team selfie to remember the experience and looking back at all those faces. They look like they had fun. I hope to stay in touch with lots of them. It was a privilege to meet them.
I had a little more time to experience the atmosphere of Dhaka this time. It is undoubtedly a non-stop, vibrant city full of beautiful and friendly people, many of whom are struggling to get by. I had tremendous admiration for the multitude of rickshaw riders who continue in the intense heat to ferry the 18 million locals around the city. As I sat on the roof of my apartment building on my last evening watching the sunset over the city and listening to the call to prayer drifting on the light breeze I was thinking how different this was to my home in rural England. But just as I thought this I caught sight of a Bangladeshi builder sat on the edge of tower block he was building watching the same sunset. We were from very different places, but both took a moment to experience a beautiful sunset. Let’s hope the world can notice more of these similarities between us all.
It has been another memorable trip to Dhaka, and I hope I have made a small contribution to ensure that some of the stories of these great people reach the rest of the world. I look forward to returning in the future.
