Steel 'n' Skin

Liverpool
1979
Sound
36m

A collective dedicated to arts, culture and performance

Here is an exciting and energetic profile of arts collective 'Steel n Skin', providing a 'behind the scenes' look into the group as they hold music, movement and performance workshops across Liverpool

Steelpan and drum skin: a marriage of Black heritage from Africa, the West Indies and generations of Black British culture is at the heart of this fantastic community arts project. A group of artists with a pioneering spirit head into some of the most neglected parts of Liverpool to address tensions and celebrate diversity in areas where it's often castigated. Filmed over a 10-day workshop, it's evident that the project was memorable to Liverpudlians of all ages and backgrounds!

Black Lives

Portraits of public and private lives against the shifting social climate of 20th century Britain.

Black communities, like many Global majority groups, have long been ill-served by a mainstream British media accustomed to reflecting predominantly white, middle-class lives - a problem entrenched in the second half of the 20th century with the rise of television. Yet a rich tapestry of work from across the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, film and TV, made for (though not always by) black people, does exist. This selection contains many surprises – some joyous, some sobering, some heartbreaking – and highlights the often painfully slow progress in addressing negative representations and stereotypes on screen. Impassioned and sometimes violent dispatches from the front line in the fight for racial equality can be found here, but so too can records of progress: in the pioneers breaking new ground in culture, politics and sport, and in the more mundane glimpses of everyday life. And this story is not just London’s story: the selection takes a journey around Britain, to a Nigerian wedding in 1960s Cornwall, an ‘African village’ in Essex and a Caribbean restaurant opening in West Bromwich; Newcastle