The Story of Digital Voice: Lou Green
In this series of articles, we talk to our brilliant team of freelancers who have made the last fifteen years of Digital Voice a real success story.
We caught up with Lou Green, who has been part of the team from the beginning, about the impact working for the organisation has had on her own practice and career.
Lou is a film-maker, facilitator and artist who currently delivers on our project with the Speaking up Together campaign group as well as providing project management. Lou’s Digital Voice story starts in 2003 when she first met Julie Nicholson, Digital Voice’s co-founder, on a project while she was completing her Duke of Edinburgh award.
This project whetted Lou’s appetite for digital media projects and with Julie’s help, she formed her own production company Luna with Lucy Scott and created a series of short films inspired by the work of Edward Hopper, her favourite painter. This work introduced her to Olwyn Hocking (the other co-founder of Digital Voice) and led to further funding to make a documentary.
From this point on Lou was hooked, she wanted to create more digital work and applied to Tyneside Cinema’s Northern Stars Academy. From there she started VJing and met Villing Chong (another of the Digital Voice team) and with further support from Julie and the team they were soon performing all over the North East at gigs, club nights and events.
For Lou the support from Julie at this early stage in her career was pivotal:
“These opportunities and experiences really shaped not only my education and career path but also myself. I had gained a huge set of practical and digital skills before I had even gone to college or university. I learned the importance of networking within the digital community and that with hard work, determination, and creativity you could achieve your goals.”
It's clear that Lou can see a link between her own development and the work that Digital Voice continues to do now with young people.
“As a young person from a working-class background my whole attitude towards what I could achieve and where I fitted into society changed. When young people are given support and guidance and a chance to learn skills they may not normally have access to in their everyday lives the positive impact is unmeasurable.”
This approach mirrors the organisation’s objectives and informs the work that Lou does for Digital Voice today.
“I think it is really important to be able to work with socially isolated groups; often people with Learning Disabilities and Autism don’t have the same social opportunities as others. We have recently been doing a number of TikTok based courses where participants are able to make videos about the things that matter to them. The platform allows them to create and share content with ease.”
To find out more about the kind of work Lou is talking about see our Programmes page.