Kirsti
“I believe if we can’t be seen, we don’t have to be bothered about, so we end up in places out of the way, where you can’t be seen, where people don’t have to see your lifestyle, see how your kids grow up. And if it’s not seen, then they don’t have to claim they know about it do they?”
What have you taken away from the experience of tracking this story over such a long period of time? That it is important to tell these stories; that whilst the economists and policy makers like to say that the ‘plural of anecdote isn’t data’, I want to show that it is equally true to say that data isn’t real life. It is important that documentarians, artists, journalists etc. tell real stories of real people and find ways to connect policy and statistics to real, lived experience. Falling unemployment figures and rising incomes may be possible to present as statistically correct, but they mask much broader problems in society associated with cuts to services, rising living costs, insecure employment and housing, growing consumer debt etc. etc. As the quote most often attributed to Disraeli says, “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics”. My role is to try and challenge some of that.
Craig Easton