CCL is excited to announce a new promotional film, due to be published in February 2022. Two days of filming were completed in October and November with director Michael van der Put of ‘Broken Hearted Youth’, a Lewisham based film and theatre company for young people. It will feature informative and heartfelt interviews from members of our staff team, as well as candid footage of social groups that we regularly connect our service users with.
The film was created to help us achieve our long-term goal of making all 18+ Lewisham residents aware of the free support we offer, as well as how to get in touch with us. Equally, it aims to raise awareness of Lewisham’s Voluntary Community Sector by promoting the work of our partner organisations and the multitude of social groups that exist out in the community!
We intend to share the film far and wide, across a range of digital platforms as well as through airing it at local groups and face to face community events. We want it to reach the many Lewisham residents who have still not heard of us but could really benefit from our support. We know from experience that a good number of these individuals may still lack the internet skills and/or access to discover it independently, yet we anticipate the video reaching their family members, carers and professional supporters too. For those already aware of our service, the video will provide a clearer picture of exactly how our service works and how to be referred. We hope viewers will be pleasantly surprised by how many different areas of support we help with!
With CCL having re-launched in September 2020, it seemed the perfect time to create a film that could explain how our new service works using recent client success stories, as well as advertise our new Monday-Friday phone line (0330 0583 464), established as a permanent fixture after proving so essential to our work during the first six months of lockdown.
It would also give us the opportunity to visually showcase a variety of social groups across the borough, many of which we have developed partnerships with over the past year. The majority of these began running face to face again last summer after many months of closure, meaning we finally had the opportunity to capture them and their members in action!
Since CCL connects people with such a vast range of activities and services, one of our biggest challenges was deciding how to cover as much of our work as possible whilst still maintaining a simple, coherent narrative that would capture the viewer’s attention. Getting our entire message across in the short space of 3 minutes turned out to be quite challenging! Who knew?!! With the helpful guidance and feedback of our director Michael, we were gradually able to fine tune the content, style and focus of the video. Inevitably, some important areas of our work were not covered, such as educational and employment based support for younger adults and adults with learning disabilities. Ultimately, we decided the main focus would be on social activities for older Lewisham residents, since they make up the majority of our client base and because tackling social isolation is at the very heart of our work.
In the weeks before filming, we invited over 200 groups, community centres and other voluntary organisations to express their interest in being featured. Of the many that were keen to participate we were able to film and photograph about ten groups across the different neighbourhoods in Lewisham, whilst also capturing iconic landmarks along the way, such as the Horniman Museum and the faithful Catford Cat!
A few of the fantastic groups included are the ‘Queens Walking Group’ for women, ‘Grove Park Community Group’, and ‘Wild Cat Wilderness’, a community green space that supports people’s mental health through volunteer gardening. We are grateful to all of them for their enthusiasm and support, and could not have made this film without them.
We can’t wait to share the video with you – Lewisham has so much to offer and we hope this will inspire you to get in touch with us soon and begin exploring what’s out there for you!
Stay tuned for updates!
07/01/2022