‘More for Dromore’

With training and supervision from Portadown-based BNL Productions, the young people themselves stepped in on both sides of the camera to shape and produce the film.

Entitled ‘More for Dromore’ and filmed on location in the town centre, the film links commentaries from three young people with scenes - acted out by others among the group - of their peers drinking, lying drunk in the street and being led off in handcuffs by police.

The scenes reinforce the young people’s key concern, namely that local decline and a lack of facilities serves to encourage anti-social behaviour.

“There’s nothing to do in Dromore,” says one young woman. “When people are bored they turn to drink, drugs and vandalism.”

Between them, the fledgling filmmakers raise concerns about the amount of ‘derelict land’ going unused in Dromore, flag up the need for facilities offering young people opportunities “to go places and do things” and signal a desire to meet with Banbridge District Council “ . . just to get them to talk to us and try and get them to listen to us and get something sorted out for us for the future”.

Nick Hutchinson of BNL Productions said the company was asked to help with a cross-community group of young people and bring them together to start to explore issues about the need for facilities.

“We were asked to go to Dromore and work with the young people,” he said. “We worked, as part of a consortium, to identify a group of young people to benefit from a project like this.”

Helping to put the company on the ground with the young people concerned were local police and the REACT group at Castlewellan Road, Banbridge, who put them in touch with youth workers in Dromore.

“The idea of the film is that it should be seen by people and used to create change,” said Nick. “The young people themselves came up with the idea and the story.

“We let them get hands-on in producing the film; we trained them in film production over about six weeks and they acted in the film themselves too.”

The film was part funded by the EU European Regional Development Fund, through the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation (Peace III), managed by the Special EU Programmes Body and thanks for helping to produce the piece go to the PSNI and Princes Street pizzeria ‘Zucca’, where some scenes were filmed.

TO view the video visit this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84pdG-n3VlI