Wishing You A Peaceful Holiday Season

Dear colleagues and friends, supporters and funders,

Season’s Greetings

It’s been a tough year. We end 2016 with the June Brexit vote and Trump election win in November; devastating conflicts in Syria and Yemen and news that has seen Arctic temperatures rising far higher and faster than scientists had predicted.

After Trump’s USA election win, there were some in the USA who drew strength from the idea that it’s ‘darkest just before the dawn’ and that now is the time for progressives to rise to the challenge with policies and campaigns that can push the far-right back. Let’s hope this observation proves to be the case as we do all we can to support those ever-growing justice movements around the world who are fighting to make this a reality.

Below is our 2016 round-up. Please be in touch if you want to know more, get involved or help our work in any way. Where-ever we are, what-ever we do, there’s a lot to ‘push back’ in the coming months and years.

Best wishes this Christmas,

Deb, Kevin, Justin, Ho-Chih

FILMS

We Are Many The July release of the Chilcot Report led to a second wave of interest in Amir’s film throughout the summer and into the autumn/winter, with dozens of public cinema screenings across the UK We hosted a special TPFF post-Chilcot Report event at Friends Meeting House in London and joined Amir for a special Oxford city screening with Larry Sanders, brother of Bernie, who joined Amir for the post film debate. It is now available to buy on iTunes and DVD.

Open Bethlehem continues its journey with releases across the Middle East and North America and we were thrilled that our partners Development & Peace hosted our Canadian premiere in Montreal. “A ninety-minute epic that transcends politics and normal cinema” wrote Daoud Kuttab, Middle East Monitor. The film is now on demand at Vimeo https://vimeo.com/ondemand/openbethlehem and DVD (£15.99) can be purchased here

CAMPAIGNS

Make Apartheid History Our December 2015 calendar was very well received and our WALL video went viral . In July, we marked MANDELA DAY with our first year video highlight loop and in August, we were delighted to showcase MAH at the Edinburgh Fringe and on the opening night of the Greenbelt Festival

From Pink to Prevention & environmental links to breast cancer A busy year! In February we finally secured a meeting with the CEO of UK’s leading breast cancer charity Breast Cancer Now (formerly Breakthrough Breast Cancer) and a blog of this important meeting is here. In May, we shared our Rachel Carson Day communication and we had a very active October Breast Cancer Awareness Month with interactive posters; an Early Day Motion tabled by Caroline Lucas; and book launch of writing by the late USA activist Barbara Brenner, hosted by UNISON. We ended the year with an article published in ‘Women & Environments’- a leading international magazine celebrating its 40th anniversary and illustrated by our campaign colleague Di Ward.

Five Percent Campaign – military spending is a ‘development issue’. In October, we attended the International Peace Bureau’s annual global gathering in Berlin. Subsequent to our presentation, strong new Five Per Cent campaign contacts were secured in East Africa, Australia and USA and in November, we were invited to present the campaign to a regional East African peace movement gathering in Uganda.

EVENTS

Martin Luther King’s Economic Bill of Rights from 1968 to 2018 and beyond. Marking the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, Project April 2018 puts his 1968 Economic Bill of Rights at the heart of a renewed global call for us all to march on power with a progressive manifesto for transformative change. Working with partners in the USA, key founding documents are now being finalised. We aim to soft launch in the USA on MLK Day January 2017.

Attlee Festival October 2017 Reviving the much under-valued story of Clement Attlee with a fresh, contemporary cultural project looking at his legacy. This year we have been refining the project and discussing with potential partners, venues and contributors. The Attlee Nation and Unity Festival will explore how, 70 years before, politicians did push back powerful vested interests for a caring social democracy and what lessons we can bring forward for today’s vision for the future.

Next year…

Alongside the projects above, next year will see us embark on several new film partnerships which connect to our three campaigns (5%, From Pink to Prevention and Make Apartheid History).

We will also develop next-stage development of a TPFF-led documentary ‘Generosity towards the Future’. This is a project designed to lift the level of political understanding through high quality ‘essay’ or ‘vision’ films on critical issues facing ordinary British people today – rising poverty; Dickensian levels of inequality; the utter failure of housing policy; crisis across the NHS.