Saturday 13 December 2008

Our Further Adventures with Centrepoint

That's Tim and the lovely Debbie Warren of Centrepoint flanking one of our posters. Here are all three of the executions currently gracing London's mainline stations. Click the image to enlarge...


The original versions got banned (which I was secretly very pleased about) but even the toned down ones are pretty hard-hitting.

Or so I thought.

I took this snap at London Bridge on our way home from visiting a Centrepoint project down south of the river. It's run by a wonderful woman called Jenny who, after we'd done the official bit, came to the pub with us for a quick drink.

Now Jenny, through her work, has a unique window on south London's gang culture. And she has a way with words – which made for a series of stories that I still find hard to believe. I'm not going to try to re-tell her tales. But I will tell you one thing. Jenny told us that she'd been to ten funerals this year of young men who died violent deaths. Ten.

So, once again, Centrepoint opened a door for me into a world that I thought I knew about but, as it turns out, didn't. It seems that there's hard-hitting – and then there's truly hard-hitting.

God love you, Jenny. There can't be many people who could do what you do.

James

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