“Community unites to defeat racism”
The Sentinel Monday July 9 2007
From the left, Vince Simpson, acting director of the North Staffs Racial Equality Council, Simon Harris, chief executive of Stoke-on-Trent's Citizens Advice Bureau, Angela Glendenning, chair of PARINS, Mike Sassi, editor-in-chief of Staffordshire Sentinel News and Media, and Staffordshire Police chief superintendent Jane Sawyers, sign PARINS United Strength is Stronger anti-racism declaration.
Add your name to the declaration at www.parins.org/declaration.cfm or www.thisisthesentinel.co.uk/harmony
Background
From the 23rd September 2003 there is a poster campaign to raise the profile of PARINS, highlighting the importance of reporting racial incidents. This campaign is run in association with the Stoke-on-Trent City Council, PARINS posters will be placed strategically across Stoke-on-Trent with a simple message outlined below.
Stoke-on-Call
A 24 hour answering service by the City Council will act as a contact point out of hours for reporting incidents. This is a valuable facility because the Macpherson reports recommends 24/7 mechanism for reporting racial incidents other than at police stations. You will still be able to call PARINS during the working hours or pop into your local police station for assistance.
PARINS TRAINING
As part of the ongoing awareness raising regular training courses are run across North Staffordshire in the last year over 1,000 people trained with 90 - 96% considering the courses very good to excellent. A list of courses booked is attached plus the training courses leaflet. Please contact 01780 407945 (Estelle) to book courses.
Valiants Against Racism
Port Vale Football Club (The Valiants) as part of their Kick Racism Out of Football strategy is planning to have an anti racism day on the 18th October 2003 on the leaflets that will be distributed on the day PARINS will be the main point of contact for racial incidences.
Background
As part of our ongoing awareness raising of the extent of racial harassment and racial incidents we felt it would be good using existing case studies to highlight graphically the impact such incidents can have on an individuals life as well as the wider community.
The video outlines the PARIN's process including how the partnership works and the strategy used to ensure maximum community involvement. This is followed by five cases from different community groups and how PARIN's went about dealing with the issues effectively.
This video now forms an integral part of the PARIN's training course, some of the comments of individuals that have seen the video have ranged from "shocking" to "something needs to be done".
Technical
The video was shot using two professional Digital cameras and edited on the latest digital suite (final Cut Pro). The Crew consisted of two cameramen, a sound recordist, a lighting engineer and 3 students Assistants from the Media Department at Staffordshire University.
The entire project took 18 days of filming and over 100 hours of editing. All the actors were local artists, chosen for the appropriate roles, some have themselves experienced racial harassment which made the reconstructed cases a lot closer to real events.
The training officer (Hughie Lawrence) was given the task by the PARIN's committee to identify the most suitable film production crew to deliver a high quality limited budget video. After much consultation and deliberation Manoubi Ben Lamri (Viva Film Productions) were selected to direct and produce the video, he was quite clear about what his objectives were.
"I wanted to give the project a real professional look and directed my actors to feel victims of racial attacks, as for the attackers I gave them the freedom to feel free and make it as real as possible. I was impressed with the outcome, some of the actors even apologised to me for the harsh treatment and the abuse they gave in their performance. They felt ashamed that people in North Staffordshire were subjected so such level of abuse".
Conclusion
We hope in due course to update the video with more up to date case studies, taken onboard even more community groups across North Staffordshire.
Partnership Approach to Racial Incidents in North Staffordshire
