Partners
Paul Johnstone
Well, it's what we all do a million times a day, but we don't always take it in, do we? That's the thing, I suppose. It's all in the looking, isn't it? It's all in the observing. It's all in, you know...So you can just build a bigger picture of the person.
Morning. How are you doing?
Yeah, you're always looking out for the person that you're with. You're in somebody's life for that time. You want to try and draw something out of people. Being there with that person, at that moment.
So it's somewhere new to have a look at.
See you later.
See you later.
He doesn't want to see himself as needing words to be bolstered and reinforced, because he understands what you're saying anyway. Don't ever try and press a lift button for him. He wants to be as independent as he possibly can, and he really does fight for that. And rather than thinking you're doing someone a favour, it's like you're disempowering them. "I can do it, so just let me do it," you know?
OK, here we go. Are you ready? Now, what would you like – chips or burger?
Burger.
OK……OK. Here we go Jack…smaller bit…bit of cheese on that piece Sir. A chip there as well? Good man. Great stuff, great stuff. Want a burger?
Yeah.
Great. You're doing well.
All right there? Right, then, ready for a bit of burger? Bit on cheese on, Jack. OK. Thanks, Jack.
There are lots of people with needs out there. Recognisable needs. Maybe it's just the times we live in, but rather than being hidden away in an institution, people are out and about, living their lives.
What do you think? Would you like to do that? When you're ready, you can tell me, OK?
David? David? Shall we go swimming?
Here we go, here we go…Music?
M&S lorry.
M&S lorry.
Sainsbury's lorry.
Sainsbury's lorry.
M&S lorry.
M&S lorry.
Sainsbury's lorry.
Sainsbury's lorry.
We’re following that Sainsbury's lorry.
M&S lorry.
M&S lorry.
You're just trying to find a way to, I suppose, be…be constant for a start, because you kind of need that. It's just you're there...OK, he's there again, he's copying the sounds I'm making. I can only guess. It's some kind of...security. This hasn't changed. I don't have to worry because it's not a scary situation, because I recognise the sounds that we're making between us. I do this, he does that. That's good. It's...it's keeping us grounded. I'm not in unknown, insecure territory, I suppose, you know?
Reminds me of my old man, he could whistle like that.
The way things have gone recently...with the cuts…there's nobody standing saying much for them at all. They really are the first to feel the cuts. They really are, you know? People's disabilities having to be tested – you think, "Jesus, man, is there no better way to run a society?” At the end of the day, all you can do is be in there – being the person that's trying to...make folks have a fulfilled day.
It's easy…It’s only care work. You kick back. All you're doing, you know, it’s cups of tea and biscuits, and all that. And I'm sure that's still there. But you can only do what you do yourself. Vulnerable people's needs…For God's sake, man, you know, it's human beings. You're at the coalface of humanity, really. But I don't know where there's anything easy about that.
It's all about normalisation. Just to try and normalise, you know, stuff that we all take for granted. You think, "OK, we're going to make this goes smoothly.” And so you just have to be...just aware. There's still moments when it becomes fraught, but you try and, um...You're just trying to remain level-headed about it. And it is what it is. We're there, we've got as much right as everyone else to be here. And in general, people are great. In general, people are.
You just try to find ways to....be with them, facilitate what they need. And I don't know, become familiar enough. You can work with somebody a long time, you can get to know their habits, but you might not really know them. People perceive the world differently. How do you start to be involved with that? I can't explain it beyond that, I don't suppose. Well, everybody wants companionship, communication - but do they? Because if you have a different perception of the world, then you might not. You might just be happily going along on your rails too, and if everything, your needs are being met, why would you need anything else?
If security and insecurity are such big factors, and how you're gonna operate during the day, then you've got to be there to reassure the whole time, man. "We're going to walk to the gym, and we're going to have a Coke, and then we're going to go for a bike ride.” And it's there. It's a solid, actual thing. We've got proof of it there – "This is what we're going to do.” And it's another tool for saying, ”Yes." You know, he's chosen that. He's picked the symbols and gone - it’s this, this and this. And you go, "Yeah, that's it.” Lets do it.
And then what are we gonna do after it?
We're gonna go cycle?
What you gonna have?
Hamburger and Coke.
Hamburger and Coke.
I suppose you're looking for cues the whole time. I mean, his reaction is all you've kinda got to go on, cos he's not going to tell you outright, "Yeah, I like this, I like that.” So, it's lots of observation, and just seeing what…if you get a response at all, sometimes. And it can just be a slight nod of the head, be a small, short sound. It's difficult, because it would be fantastic to try new stuff. But new stuff is a different environment. You’re trying to find a line between, you know, giving people more experience…and confirming what we're doing next. Repeating what it is we're doing now. So you're keeping it going the whole time – to the next, to the next, to the next. And Mum says he's like that at home as well. That's been achieved - next, next, next, keep going.
And I suppose because we all have…we pick up signals all the time. Our brain's processing the way other people are looking at you, reading facial expressions and stuff like that. Some of the folks I work with, they don't...they can't process the signals that we can as quickly as we can. They can be at a disadvantage from the very start. You can fall behind with that. That's got to be a hellish place to be in, when everybody else is...we can be eloquent, and we all can just get on moving and working our way through our lives.
The world's a scary enough place. When you put yourself in the position of a son or a daughter who's more vulnerable, I can't imagine the pressure that that must be. So to be able to be that person that can take some of that pressure for parts of the day. An awful lot of trust. People stay with you, because it's people's lives.
We're all here at this moment, and you do whatever you can do. You know, just trying to help people enjoy the ride to a degree, you know. Like I'm trying to enjoy it myself.
The Great Bear
Jenny Holt
English Oak
Sessile Oak
Pedunculate Oak
Japonica
Leyland Cypress
Red Cedar
Western Hemlock
Silver Birch
Poplar
Red kites, buzzards, kestrels, sparrow hawks. They’re our birds of prey. And then we have cuckoos and jays and everything that bomb about you, as well as all the little songbirds.
Trees grow nice and slow and steady, and the kind of work that revolves around them can be as well.
Dotty
Princess
Buttercup
Felicity
Pixie
Pluto
Maisy
Panda
Crazy Eyes
Ponda
Smiler
Choppy
Patch
I do get upset when my animals go. I do cry. But the day that I stop getting upset when I take my animals for slaughter is the day that I’ll quit, because that’s the day I won’t care anymore.
My family moved up here in 1820, so I’m seventh generation. Always been on this same farm from then really.
Ever since I could walk and talk I suppose I’ve wanted to farm.
Pink Ladies
Bramleys
British Cox Apple
Royal Gala
Braeburn
Smitten Apple
Granny Smith
Plum punnets, and peaches, and Russia pears.
Indonesia
Timor
Malaysia
Portugal
Poland
Lithaunia
India
Pakistan
Muhammad Idrish
What was brought home is that it was us doing it - in front of the camera and behind the camera. We had two frames, so it was a kind of conversation between people who trusted each other. The reason they could actually express themselves so easily and frankly is because it was done by somebody who they knew. It is, you know, like, Adam, you are sitting there and asking me a question. I can easily turn the camera around and ask you the same question. It is was like videoing a conversation in a room. It’s a gang of friends sitting together having a chat.
Marian Hall
The fact that you’re using video and you’re seeing how the editing works, you never look at a television programme in the same way, you never look particularly at a news report in the same way. It became immediately obvious how you can bias a report, how you can snip out the thing that somebody really, really wanted to say and make them say things that they never intended to say in the first place. So, you were empowering people, you know, they were choosing how they wanted to be represented.
Ranbir Bains
I think what was important with these projects was the demystifying. The media isn’t about somebody else controlling it and expressing your lifestyles, that you can actually take it. It’s not some mystical skill that can only be held by few. And it was a great opportunity to start discussing who presents what.
Marian Hall
Like Geraldine was saying this morning, I was thinking about it afterwards. You know, it’s like it’s all been downhill since the ‘80s, and when I start talking about the ‘80s, I get that kind of excitement and optimism back, but if I look long-term at what’s happened in this country, it’s all been - from a trade unionist point of view - it’s all been downhill, and there are so many repressive laws now that you don’t even think about.
Cathy Wade
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about ruins and the fact that when you were growing up, when you were living in the 1980s, you were living in a landscape in which this looks like a new space, and looking back at the archives, you’ve suddenly got these amazing moments of environments that just look like they’ve been through a form catastrophe, and you think, “what sorts of environments have we got now?”
Ian Sergeant
We’re in this moment of almost too much information; where we find it difficult to find the truth and the realities in all of this, and that’s why it’s important to go back to a period like the ‘80s. The demonisation of the unions; there was a conscious decision: to break up the unity of the workers, because you needed to introduce this new system of operation, and, by getting rid of the unions, and breaking them, and, obliterating them, literally beating them into the ground, and then introducing this new way of individualism.
Cathy Wade
People meeting in a room is the most transformative thing, just full stop. I think it’s that sense where you can hear the tonality of somebody’s voice, you can hear where they’re at with something, you can actually have that meeting point that is real.
That sensibility of what can be achieved when human beings do meet is phenomenal.
Ian Sergeant
There’s got to be, there’s got to be. There’s got to be more to life than people just existing, and that’s what we’re doing right now. And I think we have lost our way. And it’s important for us to try and retrace back to where and why that happened, and, if we can, start to pave a way forward for ourselves and say, “Actually, we are greater as a collective of people.”
The next generation will always hold the previous generation to account, and I think we are, we’re being held to account. You’re of the next generation, you’re holding this microphone in front of me now, you’re holding me to account, and account for your times. And I think that we are responsible for a lot of the things that are happening now. We need hold our hands up and say, “We’ve let you down,” and we need to do things to repair that. And I don’t know how we’re going to be able to do it; in this current political moment, I don’t think we’re anywhere near close. This needs to play itself out, and I don’t know how it’s going to play itself out, but we’re in a really dangerous time.
Muhammad Idrish
If you are a politically conscious person in England, you know there are two different Englands. There is an England of the capitalists, the England of the racists, the England of the Brexiteers, the England of the extreme right, and the other England is the fighting England, the trade unionist England, the left England, the socialist England.
You know, they might not run the government, but you’ve got that quiet fraternity in my England, the people who fight for justice, the people who fight against racism, the people who fight for social justice, the people who fight for equality, and that’s the England I know, and that’s the England I love.
Jeanette
My dad was awful.
We went through all sorts of traumas with him. And we had a wicked stepmother as well.
All very ‘Cinderella’. I had to get a job as soon as I could. I had to earn money to keep him in beer and fags.
He had a pub and lost everything. He eventually went off to South Wales to escape his debts. So I was on my own living in a bedsit at 16. I went to youth employment and they said we’ve got nursing, the army, or a job at the local public library.
So I went for the library.
And my old school teachers, they gave up their lunch breaks to help me study for A levels at the same time. That’s how I did it.
Some things are in you from the start aren't they? I’ve always had a love of books. They’re old friends. And I loved reading and wanted to teach kids to read.
I met Bernard at the library. We were friends for two years before we went to a Communist dance in Bingley. I mean, I’m a raving Socialist but the Communist’s were rubbish dancers. However, the food was good.
I had five jobs at one time.
I had to have a timetable on the wall.
Work meant exhaustion.
Dark rings down to my boots.
But I loved it because you could do something.
In any mining place,
there was no work for women really.
I mean if you've got no washing machine and cold running water, and you’ve got all the pit clothes to wash.
Well, you’re not gonna have time are you.
And the tension...this awful job down the pits. Working all those hours. Danger every minute.
Stephen
I lived in my bedroom a lot. I didn’t like going downstairs.
I were about 11. My dad stopped my pocket money. So I got a job at the market.
I then worked in kitchens.
One day somebody didn’t turn up and I got sent out doing Silver service – peas and carrots.
Jobs have come and gone. I’ve just got on with it. One job, I had to sort trays out of millions of screws.
All day just doing that.
That was the most boring job.
But the hardest thing is getting the job in the first place.
The hardest job I’ve ever done is being a dad. Not being able to read to my kids. That hurt but I can do that now. I’m joining the Labour party. Everyone complains, but at least I’ll know I’m trying.
I were a janitor.
I could clean for more than 12 hours.
Either acid, bleach, chemicals, general cleaning or hoovering.
They gave me a list I memorised.
I learned the warning signs and a guy helped me if I got stuck with the reading. I was my own boss and didn’t need to be in a set place at one time.
It got me out of the house. I stayed until I had health problems.
I went into the pub one week and someone said,
“What you doing in here, you don’t work? How can you come in here?”
I’ve been volunteering for 6 years. He said that isn’t work. “You’re scrounging.”
But I work 10 hours now.
I went back in with my first wage and this guy said the same thing.
I said I am working, and volunteering, so you’ve got no need to pull me down. Everyone needs to start somewhere.
Dennis
The family across the street where I lived tried to tell me the Royal Family had blue blood. I said don’t be so bloody daft.
Nobody’s got blue blood.
We’ve all got red blood.
Even the bloody Royal Family’s got red blood.
I remember telling the whole family that.
They were bloody convinced they’ve got blue blood.
I put them right.
So I went into politics when I were 4.
When I was a union man I had a job in the pit.
I weren’t skiving on the pit tar.
Even when I was president of the Derbyshire NUM I worked in the pit.
1970. I got elected, and six o’clock the day after I went to work. I didn’t have two ha’pennies to rub together.
I hadn’t got a bank account.
I hadn’t got a car. We hadn't any money. I went to work because I didn’t know when I was going to get paid in Parliament. Nobody sent me a letter saying turn up on such and such a day. I just had to keep looking in the papers to see when swearing in started. So I kept going to the pit.
I worked in an industry where everybody’s life depended on everybody’s else. If you didn’t go to work you didn’t get paid.
So I’ve adopted that technique in Parliament.
I went with a set of ideas.
I’m in there before eight o’clock before the doors open. There’s about 16 drinking places in Parliament and I’ve never been in any of them It’s not because I’m puritanical, but if you smelled of beer at the pit head you where turned away.
And rightly so.
Adi
I could always get a hands on job.
I’ve worked at McDonalds, I’ve worked on building sites, I’ve been a spray painter, a gardener, a tattooist,
a Slaughterhouse man, and a warehouse assistant. There are jobs but conditions are poor.
12 hour shifts, four on, four off, then nothing.
I’d seen the warehouse going up.
I went for a 12 week job with a nought contract.
They said I might get a full time contract at the end of it.
I was designated three aisles to work.
The machine I worked were 12 metres up in air.
High as two houses.
Picking a ton-weight.
Take this pallet from A1 to D5.
All day long picking pallets off a shelf and putting others on another shelf.
Up in the air, people look this small.
I wondered what my lass was doing.
She was always in my mind. I had photos of all three kids on my vehicle so they were always watching me.
When you’ve got a family, a home, you’ve got overheads, and you haven’t got enough money coming in to go out, that’s when it starts getting really, really, really bad. And when we were there, there was definitely no trust in the place, and no unions. I suppose, if I was in a union I would never had been laid off for two weeks and then not given my job back.
Serena
I’d been a carer for my mum since the age of 14.
But I had helped her before then.
I needed a change. Fed up of being in the shadows, the thought persisted.
Would anybody support me? Would anybody offer to help me? Would anybody even care?
I saw no way into such a closed world. My grades weren’t good. But I’d made my decision that same night, I wanted to try and get into the college. I want people to know who I am.
I want them to see me as me. I want this to happen.
