Tag Archives: Youth Unemployment

Are The Kids Alright?, Blog

Kids on the scrap heap

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Sunday Sun
12 August 1979

The youth of Sunderland is being thrown on the scrap heap. Unemployment has sapped their energy, they are shattered and just hanging about miserable.

That is the picture gained by a BBC film crew which they will pass on to the nation via “Brass Tacks – Are the Kids All Right?” (BBC-2, Thursday, 8.05 pm).

A New-Wave group called The Rejected is featured heavily and programme researcher Ian McNulty said the lads in it were the only positive youngsters they met among the unemployed.

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Paradise Lost

Picture of Chapeltown ‘unbiased’

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Paradise Lost, BBC2
Yorkshire Evening Post
10 March 1979

A BBC programme portraying urban decay in Chapeltown, Leeds, received a mixed reaction in the area today.

“City“, a 35-minute documentary on BBC 2 last night gave an extreme impression of life in the suburb, said a senior community relations officer.

However, he praised the prominence given to the pupils at Harehills Middle School rehearsing for their production of Paradise Lost.

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Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost, BBC2

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Stephanie Ferguson’s Viewpoint
Yorkshire Evening Post
10 March 1979

IT COULD have been down-town Harlem or even the Brazil Carnival, but it wasn’t. The opening shots of urban decay and the smiling faces that live among it took us nearer home to Chapeltown, Leeds, in “City” (BBC-2), the first of six programmes on life in our towns.

 “Paradise Lost” was not the usual warts and all probe into the red light and twilight zones. Instead we saw the Tiger Bay of Leeds through the eyes of its youngest residents, the pupils of Harehills Middle School and in particular Orlando Weeks.

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Paradise Lost

Schoolboy hope to bleak resignation

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Sean Day-Lewis
The Times
10 March 1979

The once popular adult cliché about schooltime as the happiest days of your life was always sadly defeatist: they are slow days but a fleeting time when placed in the three-score-years-and-ten allotted at least to Mrs Average.

That the old saying can sometimes contain an element of truth was poignantly illuminated last night with BBC-2‘s Paradise Lost.

This vivid opener of “City,” a six-part series from BBC Manchester which will illustrate various aspects of inner-city decay, was carefully photographed and edited to establish the maximum contrast between smiling hope at the beginning of the ‘teens and bleak resignation at the end of them.

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Broadcast TV, Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost, City, BBC2 (1979)

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BBC2
8.0 New Series
City
Paradise Lost
Radio Times
9 March 1979

Six films about inner cities now – seen through the eyes of those who live and work in them.

Chapeltown in Leeds. Back-to-back housing, high unemployment and low morale; a multi-racial, often violent, example of urban decay. A group of enthusiastic 12-year olds, encouraged and guided by dedicated teacher Nadine Senior, is preparing for the school’s Christmas production, this year Milton’s Paradise Lost/