4th Annual Wellbeing Conference
This annual event, sponsored and assisted by Always a Chance, commenced on the 12 May, Friday evening, with some of the 17 old and new members re-acquainting themselves, or socialising for the first time, in the bar and hospitality areas of the Sunley Conference Centre, University of Northampton. The 17 attendees plus the four Trustees came from as far afield as Ireland, Scotland and Spain (one of our members now lives in Spain) covering tragedies occurring in 12 different countries around the world.
A busy weekend had been planned with some serious guest speakers leading the way on the Saturday, followed by a more relaxing wellbeing day on the Sunday.
Saturday began with a presentation by Simon Hare, Producer and Documentary maker of the BBC's Inside Out programme. His topic was "Dealing Effectively with the Media". As an example of his work he showed a video featuring two of our members (who were present at the meeting) that had been broadcast earlier this year. These weekly regional Inside Out features are 9 minutes long and are produced, in turn, by 11 different BBC regions (Simon being responsible for the East Midlands area). The video had been filmed and produced with investigative help from the University of Derby's Justice for All team, headed by ex-Senior Investigating Officer, Tony Blockley, and opened new insights into our members’ yet unresolved case in Italy.
Simon's general view was that whilst journalists have no power as such, they can at least shine a light into areas of concern. His top tips for victims dealing with the media, were for families:
to take control of who to speak to (or not)
to set parameters
to supply carefully chosen photographs
to always ask for details of interviews beforehand
to give feedback to the media afterwards.
Simon stressed the benefits of developing good relationships with trusted local media presenters, where continuity can be of more benefit than occasional fleeting interest from National media.
This was followed by a round-table 5 minute introduction by each of the members present. Each victim’s family member had the opportunity to summarise and give an update of the progress made on each of their tragic cases. Members find that the ability to talk openly and honestly about their circumstances with similar, understanding families is extremely therapeutic.
After lunch, there was a dynamic question and answer session provided by Sophie Scragg, an Outreach Officer for Parliament, on the subject of "An introduction to your Parliament: Engaging and Influencing". To illustrate her point she asked some searching questions, probing how much we, the general public, actually understand about the differences between Government, Parliament, the House of Commons, and the House of Lords. She then moved on to cover the different campaigning buttons that can be pushed to either champion or to promote specific causes, or to cause investigation of particular problems. There are many ways to gain attention, from petitioning, to Parliamentary questions (PQ’s) and Sophie covered the activities of All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG’s) and Select Committees.
This was followed by an update on our Charity's activities and an informal Saturday evening spent on-site.
Sunday morning commenced with a Reflections and Remembrance service - an extremely moving session by Philip Painter, a retired police officer from Kent with 30 years experience including homicide investigations. He read poems and had prepared a very touching and thought-provoking non-denominational service, remembering each of the victims, with an individual candle lighting ceremony. It was an emotional and therapeutic ceremony. Philip asked attendees to review the individual hopes and aspirations that they had written down at the previous year's meeting, and maybe set some new ones. Attendees wrote personal messages on yellow ribbons and everyone moved out into the sunshine to attach them to the Stephen Lawrence Memorial tree, a permanent feature on the University’s Park campus.
Attendees then had the option to be involved in any one of three separate wellbeing activities or simply a walk around the open fields surrounding the campus in the pleasant summer sun.
The Trustees of Murdered Abroad would like to express our sincere thanks to Nick Allen of the University of Northampton, Always a Chance for sponsoring this meeting, Hazel and Pete Kouzaris who worked hard on the organising and who are our link with the University, Jeanne, Helena, Kate and Bee. Thank you all for making the weekend a success.