Participatory filmmaking project working with Professor Julia O’Connell Davidson and her team on the project, Modern Marronage, the Pursuit and Practise of Freedom in the Contemporary World (MMPPF) to produce films and build filmmaking skills with research participants who’ve arrived in the UK seeking asylum, as well as a series on challenging normative assumptions on Modern Slavery.

I have been working as lead filmmaker on the MMPPF project since August 2022. With colleagues Andy Porter and Lee McKarkiel, we’ve been training young asylum seekers and refugees from Africa based in the UK in film making skills in order to co-produce a film that not only draws attention to the heavy restraints on freedom imposed by UK asylum and immigration policy, but also to the many ways in which, against the odds, these young people continue to pursue and practice freedom.

Together, we completed the short documentary film Voices from Ipswich, which thematises the young people’s experiences and realities of navigating the asylum system in the UK. With the same group, we are currently creating three short films that explore and challenge normative assumptions on Modern Slavery as part of an AHRC grant titled, Changing the Narrative on Modern Slavery.