Our mobile exhibition tour came to an end last week, and so we’ve added all seven films here for you to watch absolutely free, any time you like.

Huge thanks again to everyone who contributed to this project — we absolutely couldn’t have done it without you!

We hope you enjoy watching these films as much as we enjoyed making them — and if you know someone else who might enjoy them, too, feel free to point them in the right direction.

The next General Election must take place on or before Wednesday 15th August 2029, and it’s already tempting (not to mention a little bit terrifying) to speculate on what might happen between now and then.

It’s also tempting to think about what kind of project we might come up with to take the national temperature at the next Election…

As part of our research into another secret project, we’ve been having some fascinating (and sobering) meetings this month where we’ve delved into the murky world of high-end food crime. 

We’ve talked to salmon smokers and cheese producers who’ve lost thousands of pounds’ worth of merchandise to sophisticated scammers — and who have very kindly let us taste for ourselves the kind of gourmet goodies these criminal networks have got their sights set on.

We also managed to speak to some of the people working undercover on the front line, helping to track down those responsible for the spiralling number of thefts and frauds, as well as tracing where the stolen stuff ends up across a rapidly expanding British and international market.

It’ll be some time yet before we’re ready to share our project which ties all this together in a final theatrical form — but in the meantime, with the Christmas season almost upon us, promise you’ll make sure you’re buying from reputable suppliers only…. As we’ve been discovering, some deals really are too good to be true…

The seven short films we’ve made in our role as Birmingham’s unofficial Election Artists (2024-25) are making their way to venues across the city over the coming weeks as the culmination of The Way I See It.

Inspired by 147 hours of interviews, 268 voicemails to our Hotline and 339 WhatsApp messages, our films home in on some of the recurring subjects and stories which mattered most to our contributors:

• Change — at his local polling station, a twenty-one-year-old is full of excitement as he votes in his first General Election and celebrates the value and importance of us all exercising our democratic rights;
• Rubbish — hunting for a lost wedding ring amongst his bags of uncollected rubbish, a man discusses his neighbours’ wildly opposing views about the ongoing bin strike;
• Health — a doctor’s receptionist praises the NHS while fielding the demands of patients’ calls to the surgery hotline;
• Food — between collections, a delivery driver reflects on the food waste and the food insecurity he sees around him across the city;
• Libraries — as her branch closes for the final time, a community librarian highlights the vital need for such spaces and the services they provide, a need that goes way beyond the borrowing of books;
• Climate — while trying to decide if she should go on her friend’s overseas hen do, a woman agonises over how much responsibility she can (or should) have when it comes to saving the environment;
• Future — a primary school teacher finds hope in the people of the city and their power to shape the world we live in for the better.

You can catch them every day (except Sundays) from now until Saturday 15th November in the South Entrance at The Exchange (B1 2DR). They’re also appearing at a host of other venues, including Sutton Coldfield Town Hall, Nechells POD, Oikos Cafe in Erdington and Edgbaston Community Centre — ahead of us launching them online here on Monday 1st December.

We have visionary/barmy* (*delete as appropriate) ideas for new projects all the time, but very few of them — maybe one in twenty? — ever make it into full production. Putting them through rigorous testing is one of the most fun, but least visible, parts of our job.

Our investigations into the feasibility of one such idea have seen us spending an inordinate amount of time in hotel rooms just lately, from overnight stays in the most basic of budget chains to some fleeting chaperoned visits at some eye-wateringly deluxe places.

Everywhere we’ve been, we’ve unfurled our 15-metre tape measures in order to map out some crucial dimensions which will be essential to us figuring out how and where we might create one of our most ambitious secret projects to date.

Some questions are easy to resolve on a quick inspection tour — power points; sources of natural and artificial light; which furniture can and can’t be moved. Others are trickier, and will call for extra research — how sound carries from one room or floor to another; the number of people you can comfortably (and, indeed, legally) accommodate in a room (or parts of a room) at any one time… 

We’re very grateful to the bemused hotel teams who have indulged our curiosity so far, despite the odd raised eyebrow or the occasional asking of “You want to do what in there?!”. 

We hope it won’t be too long before we get to share the fruits of all these mysterious trips with you!