Black teachers, trans women, cleaners and cons: how the BBC's Open Door
allowed 'real people' to let rip
Sean O'Hagan
Tue 24 Jan 2023 16.31 GM
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/black-teachers-trans-women-cle
aners-cons-the-bbcs-open-door
n 1973, Mike Phillips was working as a teacher in Paddington when he was
contacted out of the blue by the Community Programme Unit of the BBC. Soon
afterwards, he found himself presenting a programme about the ways in which
black children were discriminated against in the British education system.
Entitled Black Teachers, it was broadcast late on the evening of 16 April
1973 on BBC Two, with Phillips chairing a studio discussion and introducing
some hard-hitting filmed reports on the issue.
"Looking back, it all seems quite strange," says Phillips, who went on to
become a journalist and celebrated crime novelist, "not least because at
that time you could walk through the BBC building and not encounter another
black person...
http://www.ravenrow.org/forthcoming/peoplemaketelevision/
Forthcoming
People Make Television
28 January to 26 March 2023
Raven Row re-opens after a five year hiatus with an exhibition of DIY
television from the 1970s. Remarkably, much of this emerged from a fringe
department of the BBC - the Community Programme Unit (CPU). Set up in 1972,
the CPU provided a camera crew and studio, and handed over complete
editorial control, to groups and individuals with 'voices, attitudes and
opinions' hitherto 'unheard or seriously neglected', so they could make
their own programmes.
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