The Big Issue, as you will soon find out when you watch this multimedia slideshow, is an independent current affairs and entertainment magazine, sold throughout Australia by people experiencing homelessness and unemployment.
Ashley Leal, Sarah Carswell and myself decided on this topic for our slideshow to illustrate the personal stories of those who sold the magazine. We intially wanted to share the lives of The Big Issue vendors in order to increase awareness of what they experience.
We arrived at the Woden Community Centre, where The Big Issue hold their monthly launch for the magazine. All vendors, volunteers and staff are invited to have some nibblies, share some gossip and generally mingle. As we got to know, this means a lot to the vendors, as they are often lonely and just in need of a good conversation.
We began by asking some of them questions and recording their answers. In the end, we interviewed all the vendors who were in the room that day, and got some great audio, however it was not really along the lines of our pitch.
Our pitch then developed with the information we were given, and became more of an overview of The Big Issue itself. I still think it is on a personal level, however not what we first intended with the initial pitch.
There was more audio then collected from two vendors who work near Civic Centre.
The editing part came next, listening, re-listening, cutting, copying, deleting…
And this is what came from all our hard work!
The Big Issue – ACT from Ash Leal on Vimeo.
