This has been hundreds of years in the making.
Say his name! — George Floyd!
I'm still in the West Country but there's a lot of
anxiety rattling around about a rise in the R number and lockdown still sort of in place.
The rest of the team are in London sort of emerging in the world.
We decided to make a film about Newham about three or four weeks ago mostly because it had
registered one of the highest death rates for Covid19 in the country,
in the meantime what's happened is the arrival of this huge uprising about racism.
We've been moving through making this film over the past fortnight or so,
the two things really feel like they've joined together.
I want to see the fists higher!
And remember, your camera is your best weapon!
If you see it and it doesn't look right, film it.
This has been an amazing series to work on.
People around Britain have used their camera phones to show us how people at places have been
coming together to fill gaps left by the government.
This stall in East London is that kind of thing.
The people who run it are collecting information about black and ethnic minority
people's experience of Covid-19.
They also handed out face masks.
Experience tells us that particularly within the black communities that we can't be wholly dependent
on government to take up our causes.
Seen from a distant through the video footage we've been capturing and
receiving, London is in the midst of a remarkable moment.
Many people have found a voice and have hope that things will change.
This is also a time of danger and rising fragility in many people's everyday lives.
This is the food bank run by the community association in Newham
which provides people with a lot more than canned food and pasta.
Its use by local people has gone through the roof since the outbreak began.
The families that we are meeting, are families that are telling us about ...
It's supposed to be temporary but we speak to families where this has
been five years, eight years ...
Maroof is one of many people in Newham who has what's known as no recourse to public funds.
Because of immigration rules even in the midst of this crisis,
he and his family are barred of any access to benefits.
With me still at home, I spoke to Maroof and his wife on a video call.
Hi Maroof, how are you?
Good, thank you.
How has life changed since the Covid outbreak began since 10 weeks ago,
really bad situation at the moment ...
Because our friends can't help us.
Like our friends also having difficulties because they cannot go to work at this moment,
the ones who have work permits.
So Covid-19 has hit you in two very serious ways.
First of all, it stopped people being able to help you and so on,
and secondly, it's delayed your case.
Yes.
We are really under pressure.
Four people, we live in one room.
Oh, you didn't tell me that.
Can you just turn your phone around and give me a sense of your environment?
This is so messy at the moment, actually.
This is my little one.
So your son, who's six, how is he?
He's shouting, throwing things,
he broke something ... he's also depressed, I think.
Before he was not like this.
If we tell him something, he doesn't answer.
He doesn't eat properly.
Eat, please.
Please.
The Home Office releases no figures for the number of people with no recourse to
public funds but there could be up to a million of them.
Newham has a higher number of these people which is one reason it's been so badly affected by Covid19.
At the end of the Docklands Light Railway, Becton, another food project,
is being run out of a front yard.
How common is that? How many people do you know who are having that experience?
I actually wanted to go and study film and television.
I did everything in college, you know, my grades but I didn't get an opportunity
to as you take it to the next level.
How do you feel about that?
A camera is powerful, doing things like documentaries and stuff is powerful, you know?
... a documentary, Stopped and Searched, you know how the police do section 60
I've done a new documentary about that, I've put it on Youtube but ...
And what are you doing for work?
I was working for Tesco, I was a supervisor in Tesco.
Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?
A lawyer.
Lawyer?
It's a good job.
You've got to study hard at school. — Yeah.
We want justice! We want justice!
There is this sense of somehow everything being laid bare.
One of those, obviously, is structural racism,
you know, as of inequality, huge economic gaps between people and places right?
All of that seems to be a sort of stark ...
Well, isn't that a proof of the starkness that the most basic aspect of staying alive is
something everybody's talking about?
With food though people have had enough, right? They've had enough of it being basic.
This project is run by the Concord Youth Club on the Kingsmill estate in Hackney.
and young people have been doing a lot of the work including filming it for Instagram.
And what is the food itself in the fact that is not pasta and tins of beans,
what does that represent you think?
Why should they not have it?
Why should people not be able to have quality?
Good food to eat.
It's treating everybody the same, it's not about deprived or being needy,
it's that we all connect and we all need support in different ways that even the people that are
cooking the foods I'll get in a sense of something from it,
it's just a complete supporter.
The Youth Club is a central part of many young people's lives but was forced to close during lockdown.
Joyclen set the food project that was a way of engaging some of them again.
This has been a really challenging time for them and that is a question I'm being asked by
them a lot when are we opening back up again, I was really concerned about
mentally what this is doing to young people and knowing what meant
to them so much and that basic being ripped away.
It is doing them so much ... For a lot of them they've been looking at themselves and
reflecting in their roles in terms of what they've been doing and its really
made the community looks at them in a different way.
I definitely, definitely miss it. Definitely miss it, man.
Everybody in Concord is like a family.
Compared to where we were 12 yeeks ago, how has your life changed?
Recently I guess it's kind of getting back to normal a little bit but from when a begin another 12 weeks,
it changes completely, I wasn't allowed to go out, do what I love doing and I wasn't getting
any acting course or anything literally. My life felt like it just turned off.
Then in the midst of all that along comes Black Lives Matter and this big
uprising against racism, right?
Yeah, yeah, I went on the protest myself and it was a nice feeling to be there.
To be there, like in an environment where everybody was on the same kind of mindset and energy.
What's it all about for you?
I personally think for me I think it's just about unification.
If I said you can go back 12 weeks, when none of this had happened,
would you take it?
I wouldn't, you know, I'm a strong believer that everything happens for a reason and
your life was planned out the way it's meant to be planned out so I wouldn't
really want to go back and change anything because if I go back and change
I might not be the person who I'm going to be.
The Mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz set up a zoom call with young people from Newham,
in the wake of George Floyd's death to talk about how they feel about the current Black Lives Matter moment.
One of the people on the call was Lily who works with Newham's youth empowerment service.
She's 14, she's involved in youth theatre and she hopes to be an actor.
I have a really strong passion for acting like in the future I want to become an actress.
Scarlett Johansson is really great and Tom Hiddleston big shout out to him,
he's amazing.
Isn't Tom Hiddleston the fellow who went out with Taylor Swift for two weeks?
I was hoping to enroll when I was 18 at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts
and it's a really hard school to get into and right now
I'm getting involved in the 2021 summer project at the youth National Theatre.
I feel like that's going to help me to reach where I want to go.
And that has been affected by the Covid thing, I would imagine ...
Why? Is that kind of stopped?
Yeah.
I everyone, my name is Mercedes and I'm 17 years old.
Mercedes is part of the same youth project as Lilly.
How has it been for you having school suspended and not being at school?
That part has been really difficult because I have a vision impairment,
it's really difficult not having my support workers near me ...
Like, sometimes I need work read to me or I need something a little bit more explained.
As anything of that kind sort of been provided in some way?
Yes, my school they still provide me with large print work so when they send me the work,
it's in large font and I have a checkup every two weeks or so with my support workers ...
But it's not the same, clearly. — No, it's not the same thing.
And how do you feel about that?
I mean, I don't I don't to ask you sort of loaded questions here but
you're kind of losing out on education here, it must feel like ...
Yes, it's like a tedious, frustrating feeling.
I want to be in the classroom, I want to be raising my hand,
asking the teacher the million questions that are in my head but I can't.
I feel that I'm missing a whole year and that's going to affect me more in the future
because a whole year could have changed everything.
Me being a teenager, I'm thinking, well I'm really
safe, let me just go outside for a little bit but then around I think around
three weeks ago a good friend of my mum's actually passed away of the Covid,
that was a real wake-up call, everybody that I know everyone started
staying indoors.
If I gave you the chance to go back 12 weeks and just resume the world as it was 12 weeks ago,
would you take it?
No, I wouldn't.
Go on, tell me why.
Because a lot has happened in the past few weeks that we need to
remember because the death of George Floyd was completely unnecessary,
it could have been prevented and like, future people that need to know that we need to
acknowledge that, that this world is crazy and this world really needs
to change its acts because if it doesn't then we're all going to get hurt in the end.
So I feel like these past 12 weeks, it's been a real learning curve for everybody.
Everybody's gained something ... Some people may have lost something but I think
everybody's gained.
I think this is definitely a time to remember because I've been telling my brothers
that we're literally living through history and history is never forgotten.
Radio presenter: Marcus Rashford forced the government to extend free school meals
for English children.
'Well, I'll tell you what happened, the Prime Minister talked to Daniel Rushford ...
... players are already taking the knee.'
When we started making these films,
at the end of March when the lockdown started, if you told me that in 12 weeks time
we would talk to lots of people who said that not with standing all the dreadful
things that have happened and the crisis were still in the midst of they didn't
want to go back 12 weeks because at least everything now was being contested,
everything was out in the open and we were sort of on the brink of
perhaps having a sort of honest conversation about who we are and where we're going ...
I don't think I'd have believed that. — It's like there's no way back, is that?
There is no way back to the world of 12 weeks ago.
Forget it, let's get on with it.