First Take

First Take is an arts training organisation run as a co-operative. It specialises in providing digital video and multimedia projects to the arts, education, community and local authority sectors across the North West. Nerve caught up with their Director Lynne Harwood to talk about what they get up to in that inconspicuous looking building on Rodney Street.

Lynne, what is the ethos that First Take works with?

Well, we only do projects that are of benefit to the community. For example we have done a production centred round young people caring for their parents who suffer from Mental health problems, and that is aimed at people working in mental health organisations.

Tell us a little about the history of First Take.

First take are twenty years old this year and I have been here for ten years. It originally started with a group of unemployed people who got together to produce Channel Fours franchise workshops, a scheme in the eighties that enabled them to get money for different projects. Well, after a few years people went their own different ways and two of the original people took it forward and created First Take, which I joined in 1993. Since then we have expanded into doing a lot more training work such as training long term unemployed people and doing a lot of training work in schools and are used to encouraging people who have problems with motivation and confidence. We either do set training courses or work with groups of people who contact us to get the skills they need. For instance we did a training project with the Manchester based group Aspirations for people with Asperger syndromes as part of a larger project called Digital Video for Excluded Groups, whereby the people with Aspergers took hold of the production themselves.

That’s pretty forward thinking given that awareness of Aspergers is a relatively recent thing in our society. How did that project come about?

We actually managed to get some money from the lottery and got loads of groups from across the North West to put in bids for the project and the group Aspirations from Manchester came up with an idea about how each individual with Aspergers in their group is unique but also they wanted to show the similarities. Kind of like an awareness raising. The wonderful thing about that particular project was that we had we had six different groups of socially excluded filmakers participating from all over the North West and we had a screening at the Crosby Plaza where they all got together. It was amazing. The actual quality of work coming forward from these groups was incredible. The only problem with projects like this is the fundraising….

I knew that would raise its ugly head sooner or later. What’s the worse bit about it?

Well, basically that you spend all the time fundraising, get the project off the ground and it’s a complete success and… then you start the whole thing again, saying the same thing again.

Is First Take’s philosophy one which emphasises people being allowed to explore and be creative for themselves rather than following a prescriptive form of training?

We want people to learn the skills and to have the technical quality so we have to tech the ABC’s if you like, but when it comes to the creative side we are there to nurture them and once they learn the skills it’s very much up to them in terms of what they want to create.

What are you running right now?

The course we’re finishing right now is the ‘Shootback’ course, which we have been running every year and which Steve is the tutor for (Steve Barr, another First Take Director). This is the course which we fundraise for from Europe every year. We have on average 90 people who try to get onto the course and we use a point scoring system, using factors such as how long they have been unemployed, and how excluded from education they have been.

What’s the most satisfying aspect of your job?

The people. The individuals and groups, and seeing how pleased they are with the results of their own work.

First Take: 0151 708 5767