Produced by Northern Fortress Films as a commission for the Thames Festival Trust and Leeds 2023, a documentary by Louisa Rose Mackeston that looks at the work of young people living in Leeds participating in the River of Hope project, exploring the impact of climate change whilst telling the story of their local river, the River Aire. Title: Thames Festival Trust: River of Hope Over the following titles a canal barge travelling along the River Aire with droplets of rain falling on the...

Produced by Northern Fortress Films as a commission for the Thames Festival Trust and Leeds 2023, a documentary by Louisa Rose Mackeston that looks at the work of young people living in Leeds participating in the River of Hope project, exploring the impact of climate change whilst telling the story of their local river, the River Aire. Title: Thames Festival Trust: River of Hope Over the following titles a canal barge travelling along the River Aire with droplets of rain falling on the water. Title: River of Hope invited Year 8 and 9 pupils, from 5 schools across Leeds, to reflect on the local and global issues around the environment As the barge continues its journey it passes a concrete stairway leading away from the riverbank covered in graffiti. During a River of Hope workshop, a schoolgirl explains why she is annoyed that she has to live in a world that isn’t as nice as it used to be and that the world is being destroyed by things humans have made. Title: The young people were encouraged to reconnect with the environment through art workshops, poetry sessions and a canal trip along the River Aire As a Grey heron takes off from along a riverbank, a boy in the workshop is exasperated by the amount of destruction, even in the farming industry, that is destroying the natural wildlife in order to grow the natural wildlife. The barge passes several former canal side warehouse now flats in converted apartment blocks. Title: The results of the project was a collective poem, written by the young people, and 20 flags were created from their artworks As another canal barge turns on the river, a second boy in the workshop states that young people should have control not the adults as they will have to suffer when they are older. As water flowing over the wear that passes under the Knostrop Footbridge, he states that as adults have caused it, shouldn’t they fix all of this? From a balcony several apartment blocks in the near distance and the Leeds city skyline changing to a workshop classroom and a group of six schoolgirls sitting around a table looking through a selection of photographs in front of them. In voiceover Chris Singelton, Poet and Playwright explains that putting young people’s voices at the centre is important to them and that how brilliantly surprised he is at how much young people have to say and how wise they can be. In a box a collection of clipboards, on one of then a ‘Brave Words’ questionnaire and someone writing to the question ‘We are from…. a world that has peace and equality.’ Sitting on a silkscreen printer in the Lutra Studios Artist Ellen Burroughs talks about how the perspective of young people has so much more potential to address the problems they face growing up in a world being so different from those in power. As some of the young people write down issues facing the environment on a large sheet of paper around the question written at the centre ‘What About the Future?’, on another sheet they come up with positive and pro-active solutions which they hold up for an audience. As Ellen Burroughs explains that she hopes they realises that their voice matters and that they do have ways of expressing themselves, a group of young people walking through a park picking up and looking at a various types of leaf. Over a montage beginning with young people taking a journey along the river in a canal barge, the film changes to them and others back in a studio working to produce various screen prints and collages. In voiceover a selection of poems written and spoken by the young people m relating to the River Aire. As the film draws to a close a line of flags produced by the young people hanging from poles near to the Centenary Bridge . Title: Thanks you to Chris Singleton – Poet and Playwright at Brave Words Youth Theatre, Ellen Burroughs – Artist at Lutra Studios Canal Connections CIC Carr Manor Community School, Cockburn John Charles Aademy, Cockburn School, Co-op Academy Leeds, Pudsey Grammar School Brave Word Youth Theatre Members, Presley Amoakohene, Iris Burgess, Ibrahim Ba Urrruita, Daria Zevzikova, Isla Thompson, Yousf Mohammed, Ola Tokarczyk, Jerreh Cham RA Smart Credit: Music by Sam Jones (@Samuel.ian.jones) Film by Northern Fortress Films Louisa Rose Mackeston – Producer, Director, Camera Operator Lily Corke Butters – Co-director, Editor Nathan J. Allen – Camera Operator Christina Worral – Post Sound Designer Title: Thames Festival Trust, Leeds Year of Culture 2023, Supported using public funding by Arts Council England, British Council, Garfield Weston Foundation, HRH The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Pageant 1952-2022 End title: Northern Fortress Films