One of the first documentaries I made for the BBC World Service News was from my home city of Birmingham in the West Midlands, UK. It’s about the lives of two young people – a Muslim girl and an Afro-Caribbean boy. They live in the same area and have some of the same influences and peer pressures – one falls into crime and the other one resists. I wanted to make a programme about this well reported ‘story’ from a different perspective which didn’t fall into the same lazy stereotypes that you find in a lot of news reports on this issue. I got to know them both, hanging out with them and meeting the people close to them, it kind of unfolds why they made different choices. It’s interesting because they’re really different people but they’re actually more similar than you first realise. Listen to the documentary, ‘A Young Life in Crime’ by clicking this link.
