Twinned with Freetown // Sierra Leone

It’s there on all the signs when you enter Hull: “Twinned with Freetown, Sierra Leone” but what does it actually mean to anyone who lives in either of those cities?

Film-maker Jon Robson took a crew from this remote city in eastern England to learn more about life in west Africa. This is the story of their experiences….

William Wilberforce is the name that unites Hull and Freetown, and in case you’ve missed the hype, next year - 2007 – will be the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, an inspiring event which came about largely due to the efforts of Billy Wilberforce. Good lad, well done.

Before being given its current name, the port at Freetown was one of the centres of the slave trade in Africa. In the 1780’s or 90’s, thanks to emancipators like Wilberforce, it was renamed and established as a base for the repatriation of freed slaves. A whole area of the city is named Wilberforce, you see his name on streets, buildings and shop signs all over the place.

Ask anyone in Freetown who Wilberforce was and they’ll tell you. Whether we could say the same thing, here, in the man’s home town is a another thing.

So the three of us – myself, film-maker/photographer Murray Clark, and writer Matt Stephenson – were funded by Creative Partnerships Hull to visit Freetown and produce work (films and writing) with young people out there, bring it back, and then do similar work with pupils in five Hull schools.

The idea is to use visual images and the written word to help young people express something about their lives, to talk about what matters to them, to try to develop a greater understanding of other cultures, and to at least start to see themselves as being part of a global community.

The way we do that, is to give the kids we’re working with, control over the production and direction of the work we do with them. They decide what the film is about, where they want to take us, who they want to talk to.
Putting yourself in their hands makes for an amazing experience – you get to see life as they see it. And in Sierra Leone that can be a very emotional experience.

The country was engulfed in a brutal civil war for 10 years until 2002, and the wounds, emotional and physical, are far from healed.
Imagine if child soldiers, coke-crazed teens with AK47s, were rampaging down Holderness Road, opening fire at random, slicing off limbs and setting people alight. That’s what life was like in Sierra Leone.

Nearly everyone you speak to has first-hand experience of loss or terror.
Then pile some poverty on top of that. The people of Sierra Leone have the lowest average income in the world, earning less than a dollar a day. Life expectancy is 38 years for men, 42 for women. One in four kids don’t make it to their fifth birthday.

There’s no free education, no electricity, no free healthcare.
Life is incredibly difficult, yet so many of the people we met have the most amazing, inspirational hope and faith and the kids we worked with have produced some amazing films.

We filmed street football and interviewed the players about their hope that the sport can unite their country and lift them out of poverty.
We interviewed street kids – orphans who work all day for a living and sleep rough.
We helped to make a drama about AIDS and the value of education, films about the hardships of the city’s market traders, about the history of Freetown.
One 14 year old boy, Sidibay, told us the story of how his family were killed and he was conscripted by the rebels to become a child soldier.
It was an amazing, moving visit and we were very privileged to be looked after by some wonderful people.

So what happens next? First thing is that we’ll be working in Hull schools, showing the films, talking about our experiences, and then asking pupils in Hull to write and produce films, photography, journalism and creative writing that can be shown to audiences in Freetown.

Click above to start the movie playing.

But more than that, we want to play a part in helping people in Hull to understand what life is like in their Twin City, to find a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood with the descendants of the slaves that Wilberforce helped free.

We want people here to experience Freetown and to help the people of Sierra Leone to build a better life.

Jon/Matt/Murray