Somewhere in Hackney - ACE100.5

Centerprise. Children and adults looking through bookshop stock. The café space, food preparation, men playing chess. Woman explains what Centerprise does, offering facilities, information, community resources, space to meet others, the bookshop, etc. She suggests that the set-up of café and bookshop offers a reason for people to go in which they might not do if it was simply seen as an advice centre. Visitor/helper talks about her experiences of the place. Young Asian woman on the need for people to believe they can change things. Her experience of being "black"; she reads a poem, Black Is Not a Skin Colour she wrote in 1976. Men talking about the success of Centerprise’s own publications, the effect this has had on the relationship between author and reader, the ways in which a local press can enable people to express themselves publicly, and how public readings can help people understand political and social issues. In a meeting of the Hackney Writers’ Workshop, one of the men reads a poem he has written, Eighty Two, and a Hearse Punctuates Finality. Woman reads The Sceptred Isle. Man reads "Peter and I sat together on an over-scrubbed bench…" about his experience of being in a police station.