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Cracker 1997Rugby Christmas Cracker's 1997 project finished on a high note this year, by winning the "Big Take National Video Awards". The awards were held at the Museum of the Moving Image in London on the 4th of March, and hosted by Steve Chalke and Cherie Blair who presented the prizes. Rugby Cracker took away the First prize of a sophisticated digital video camera. The Video competion was part of the 1997 Big Take Project, Big Take now being Rugby Chistmas Cracker's parent charity. During the late summer and autumn of 1997 young people began preparing for the annual Christmas Cracker project, which gives them an opportunity to build awareness of Third World issues among their peers and the general public in and around Rugby. The project in Rugby has been running for seven years, setting up a restricted licence radio station for the month of December, broadcasting to Rugby and the surrounding villages. The radio gives the central focus to the project, which also ran a high street cafe and numerous fund raising events. As well as fund raising and campaigning on behalf of street kids, groups were challenged to make a video about their project and the street kids issue. Of the 300+ Big Take groups, 49 entered videos into the competition and the top 20 were shortlisted to attend the awards ceremony, with the winners being kept secret right to the end!
Planning began in May with meetings, fund-raising ideas and finding volunteers. An open meeting was advertised in the paper explaining the project. It is amazing how people with different skills volunteered to help just when we needed them. A media student from the local college was willing to be involved with the video production and was also able to access suitable editing equipment, which proved invaluable to us. The first tasks that need to be undertaken are applying for grants and fund raising for the radio licence. The cost of putting on the radio amounts to approximately four thousand pounds, this includes the radio licence, PPL and PRS licences and setting up costs. We always like to keep the setting up costs for the project and the fund raising for street kids separate. Premises need to be found and we often have had to wait till the last minute before the promise of any. We always plan to get these rent-free. From October half term radio training gets under way. The one hundred and fifty radio presenters are given at least one hours training at weekends and evenings in a temporary studio in a spare room. November and December was a hive of activity with events and preparation. While all of this was going on a team from the college took video footage of the activities. So after Christmas the task of editing and choosing appropriate parts for the video began. A Saturday was put aside to decide the storyboard, and the college team spent many hours editing. The BBC then asked if they could film us for their Newsround programme. This gave us an added stimulus and they attended one of our planning meetings where we were deciding on the links between the various parts of the video. The plan was to do animation using a christingle which exploded giving rise to a screen of orange which was written on using words appropriate to the section. So a budding artist took on the task of designing the sets for the animation and various evenings were put aside to make lots of christingles in various shapes. The long task of filming the animation took place, which produced exciting results. Once all the filming was complete further editing was done to include the animation and reduce the tape to less than ten minutes, not an easy task. Newsround Extra devoted a programme in February to the Big Take and some of our project was included. A follow up to this was the award ceremony that was featured in the following weeks broadcast. Rugby Christmas has been able to hand over £7,000 to The Big Take Trust to help street children and we trust that many people in Rugby have become increasingly aware of problems affecting street children and the need for us to act.
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