what we want!

I attended the BT Seen and Heard awards to collect an award for my film Depression Diary.  We arrived at the Houses of Parliament, the place was surrounded with guards and they scanned my bag and coat just like at airports. The musician from my film was already there and came and introduced herself to me, I had not had a proper chance to talk to her since the first screening of my film last year. My other 2 guests arrived from far away, they woke at 5.30am to get the train to support me, which was one of the most amazing things. We picked up a copy of the Seen and Heard report which told us a summary of all the projects and included our own illustrations. Mine was under the heading ‘Overcoming personal demons.’

The event began with a man saying the Seen and Heard awards had been running for 7 years, and the number of entries was the highest this year, so we were all extremely lucky to get to the final 24 winning projects. I looked around the room; there were predominantly young people there and a few adults who were receiving awards for projects that had helped youth.

One winner from Northern Ireland collected an award on behalf of his sister in hospital, who has cystic fibrosis. She raised 60K to help build a school in Uganda, having been inspired by a visit there. A group of girls from the Isle of Wight campaigned successfully with ferry companies to get cheaper travel fares for students. There was a team from St Helena Island in the South Pacific who surveyed and held discussions with young people in their area about what it is like living there and to try and improve the infrastructure of their country. There were projects to do with improving access to sports for disabled children and a group of children creating a website to help kids keep safe on the internet. The scales of the projects varied enormously, some reaching out internationally, some local. All the project winners were spread-out nationwide. I was one of only 2 winners who came from the London area.

There was a finger buffet for lunch and then a half hour session, where a woman tried a technique to help us think up questions to ask a panel of MPs. They gave us a handout explaining who would be on the panel, including Ann Widdecombe, Andrew Green, a chairman, 3 baronesses and Olympic medallist in diving Leon Taylor.

Then it was the awards ceremony. I was surprised to be given my award first, a man gave a summary about my project and my photo was taken with the Olympic medallist and another guy who hosted the awards. I was happy to share the memory with my friends who came to support me.

I had never imagined anything like this would happen to me before I sent an application for www! to make a film. I’m glad it happened, it is such a confidence boost and unique opportunity, I’m really lucky.

See more photos on our Flickr page.

Samantha Ma, 9.4.10