London 2012 blog

July 4th for me was a wonderfully gratifying culmination of six months of working with students from schools around the 5 London Host boroughs for the 2012 Games. We were celebrating and sharing some outstanding and stunning short films, photographs and music tracks created by the students.

My involvement in Welcoming the World/Our World project was as a filmmaker on two fronts. Firstly, I was a Consultant Director on the OUR WORLD schools project enabling the students to make short films and to tell their own stories. Secondly Robyn, the Project Manager, also asked me to make my own film which resulted in a short documentary titled, Diversity in Motion.

Filmmaker Jonathan Charles and I spent several months preparing to go into 7 schools and develop film ideas with students between aged 7 to 14. What did they want visitors to the 2012 Games to know about their worlds? What aspect of their lives did they want to share and give glimpses of? What were they proud of? What did they like to do with their time? How did they want to welcome the world?

In intensive one day workshops, we came up with diverse themes ranging from families, friendship, play time, unity in the community to ambitions for the future. We devised exciting scripts with them and encouraged them to story board their ideas. We brainstormed with them about which locations in their boroughs they wanted to shoot their films.

The students showed incredible imagination and hard work which culminated in rivetting short films made with guidance from a small professional crew. In addition, Mike Dixon, a talented and versatile composer went in and worked his magic with the students to create unique sound tracks for each film.


On July 4th, the most amazing moments for me came from watching the faces of the students watching their films and seeing themselves projected on to the big screen. Sharing their films, they giggled, clapped, hid their faces behind their hands, some out of shyness and others from wonderment and disbelief that these were actually their films. They stomped and screamed their way through the screenings. There is nothing more rewarding then watching young people grow in their confidence, become articulate about their lives and visibly increase their self esteem, because of what the project, OUR WORLD enabled us all to create.

Diversity in Motion, the short documentary I directed, profiles some of these young people giving us additional glimpses into their worlds. In 2012 when guests from all over the world come to London they will watch these video postcards and see a celebration of diversity, talent, imagination and a city that boasts some of the most inspired and intelligent students who we have good reason to be proud of.