Is anyone listening?

At the start of Challenge Poverty Week 2019, we speak with Peter Kelly from the Poverty Alliance and JRF's Deborah Hay about the importance of working with those with a lived experience of the issues facing people in poverty in Scotland today, and how we can work with the media to change the poverty narrative.

Recorded live at our focus day at the York Festival of Ideas, we brought together a panel of authors and film-makers to share their thoughts on changing the narrative around poverty in the UK. Speakers include Billie JD Porter, Kerry Hudson, author of Lowborn, writers Jodie Russian-Red, Shaun Wilson and Chris McCrudden, who are involved in Common People, and Wale Shittu who talks about his film Council in Me which explores life on council estates and challenging stereotypes.

In this episode, we talk about how children are losing out at school because of a hidden injustice in how the Free School Meals system works.   

This episode focuses on the new film on Guardian Films and supported by JRF, Fighting Shame, featuring women from the film plus Director Sally Ogden. The film focuses on a group of women from Leeds sharing their stories of poverty through eight everyday objects and the community initiatives they’ve launched to fight the shame that surrounds it, in a bid to start a dialogue with policymakers.

A Northern Soul was premiered at the Sheffield Doc-Fest in June. Since its release, the film has gone on to play to packed crowds up-and-down the country and received critical acclaim. In this episode, June Sarpong MBE speaks with the films star Steve Arnott, the director Sean McAllister and Nathalie McDermott from OnRoad Media about the film and their experiences of UK Poverty and the films lasting impact.

In the first episode of our 'Is anyone listening?' podcast, Ayesha Hazarika MBE speaks to people with lived experience of poverty to get their views on Brexit, whether their views are being listened to by politicians and what their lives will look like after we leave the EU.