A petition calling for the creation of a Youth Minister has been launched by Revolver Entertainment and the Damilola Taylor Trust. As with many other initiatives around at the moment, one of its aims is to give a voice to the disillusioned young people. It certainly isn’t stinting in its ambition though – aiming to collection over a million names on a petition to be presented to the Prime Minister after the election.
Linked to the campaign is a new British film, Shank, which addresses issues of gang violence and knife crime. The storyline and script for Shank were developed using workshops with teenagers, and some of the casting was also done through schools and social media.
Mo Ali, Shank’s Director, says, “Kids killing each other is more of a trend now and it’s very sad. It’s the environment that teaches them that it’s ok to do that, or that it’s cool to stand up for your rights and kill someone for them. There’s no emotional connection to taking a life. We have to tackle that – we have to show how horrible it is as much as possible, but with these young kids, the last thing they want for us to do is to ram it down their throat.”
Mo Ali’s role in the film is in itself interesting because as Nick Taussig of Revolver explains, “Mo Ali, from a background of poverty and violence, found a way out. Giving Mo the opportunity to direct the film was all the more meaningful and significant because of this. I hope that through the work we’ve done thus far with the Damilola Taylor Trust, a workshop built around the issues of the film for at-risk teenagers from Waltham Forest and a forthcoming creative writing day, a few young Britons might follow Mo’s inspiration.”
I do like the political pastiche of the film’s poster used to launch the petition:
Here’s the film’s trailer:
More about the film on www.shankthefilm.com.
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5 Comments
While the aims of those behind this idea are thoroughly laudable, I question whether this is the right answer.
A Youth Minister sounds awfully like a ‘Youth Czar’ by another name. Either way it implies a top-down approach that’s unlikely to help the underlying problems. Surely a bottom up approach, giving people more power in their communities though smaller councils and no externally imposed targets leaving councillors and officers free to set their own priorities is the way to go. With local control the difficulty ceases to be ‘youth’ and becomes named individuals.
Incidentally, local is also cheaper. Just a thought.
“Revolver” Entertainment? Not bigging up gun crime and being part of the problem, then.
Having said that, anyone who portrays Nick Griffin as a dog deserves our support.
No, no, no! The point of Ministers is to run departments. A Youth Department would be pointless and silly. By all means push for ways of keeping issues of concern to young people in the minds of politicians, and especially of those ministers whose departments are most likely to impact on young people (but then, which ones wouldn’t?). But a “youth minister” would just be a make-work for another brown-nosing pole-greaser in parliament. We’ve got too many jobs of that sort already.
I think it is a great idea