Wallee Mc Donnell, director and communications, Celebrate Life CIC, explains how the organisation evolved from initially putting on a wide range of cultural events to creating the film ‘Power to Change’ and workshops, with the aim of contributing a solution to some of the problems young people are facing in London today.
I was invited to join colleagues Roni Redmond and Wendy Lewis in 2012 and together we formed Celebrate Life.
We began as a collective initially putting on a wide range of cultural events in collaboration/partnership with various diaspora communities in London, eventually taking the step of officially formalising ourselves as a CIC in 2019.
With the advent/explosion of knife crime and violence in London about 8 years ago we made a decision to switch our focus and create a film called Power to Change and workshops with the aim of contributing a solution to some of the problems young people are facing in London today.
Power to Change was released in 2021. It turned out to be a compelling documentary addressing youth violence with a positive weaving together of stories of Londoners who have suffered grief, violence and trauma, yet come through the other side after making better choices. The film tells the stories of five people as they learn how to move beyond the past with inner strength, circumspection and wisdom.
Peace Education Workshops
Peace Education workshops are an innovative series of video-based workshops that gives participants the opportunity to focus and reflect on their own inner resources such as choice, hope, and dignity, inner strength choice, appreciation, self-awareness and hope – and also explore the possibility of personal peace. It is non-religious and non-political.
Currently we’re running a course once a week in a community centre in Brixton with others lined up to begin in the autumn.