Silent Cities and Community Journalism

I set up Silent Cities Ltd as I was becoming incensed about the portrayal of many minorities in the mainstream media (and that was 10 years ago), but was also excited about the potential of new technologies to help people tell their own stories and control their own narrative.

We ran for seven years in a (freezing cold!) office in Neepsend, running intergenerational digital projects, community journalism programmes and start up incubators. 

One of my favourite Community Journalism Projects was our first cohort - a group of highly talented creative individuals with so many different stories to tell.

…Individuals such as Fazia who was living at the Roundabout hostel when we first met, created some great content on our programme, then went on to volunteer for us on a number of projects. She is now Art Curator at Birds Yard Gallery in Sheffield, and has recently held her own Art Exhibition: ‘More than a Hijab’, inspired by her first Community Journalist project: ‘The good the bad and hijab’.

Our community journalists went on to volunteer for our Age Better in Sheffield project, and were key to securing £6million of funding into Sheffield to reduce isolation and loneliness for older people - testimony to the untapped potential that exists in our towns and cities, and why austerity and Tory cuts to supporting projects like ours so heartbreaking.

Here’s a just a selection of some of the stunning photography taken by our community journalists around Kelham Island, prior to full gentrification of the area.

The Fabulous Faiza Omar at the recent Private View of her beautiful exhibition ‘more than just a Hijab’

A huge, thank you to Vicky Morris for her help with the first programme, and Hannah Goraya, and also to everyone who helped out and supported Silent Cities over the years including Maureen, Diane, Pete, Andrew, Andrew’s dad, Vicky Morris, Tiina, Colin, Paul Ward, Juliann Hall, all my family, and all our wonderful board members including Nige, Stella, Tracey and Julie.