Gaslight

GASLIGHT PERSONNEL

Stephen Gargan manages the delivery of the ‘epilogues’ Workshop Education Programme. Coming from a community development background in Dublin, a concern for justice issues in the north combined with an interest in literature and film and an acute awareness that working class communities are in the main excluded from these tools of expression provoked a move to Derry in 1990. He quickly became active in the community education sector. Working freelance he was a founder member of both 20/20 Vision a cultural education project and the Gasyard Wall Feile, a radical and outward looking community festival based in Derry’s Bogside. He co-ordinated the festival in 1996, 1997 and 1998 and was also Director of Publicity for the Foyle Film Festival in 1996. Stephen has for 19 years been a member of the Bloody Sunday Organising Committee which coordinates a series of educational events around the anniversary of Bloody Sunday on the themes of Justice and Human Rights. He was also instrumental in initiating a number of other community education projects that include: The Powerhouse, a multimedia project designed to bring the technology of expression to disaffected young people and Bluebell Arts, a multi disciplinary arts project based in Derry’s Bogside. He is a co-founder and director of Gaslight Productions and co-developed the ‘epilogues’ Workshop Education Programme with Jim Keys. He was Co-producer on Gaslight’s first project, the drama-documentary film ‘SUNDAY’ (about the events of Bloody Sunday).

Jim Keys is the primary facilitator of the ‘epilogues’ Workshop Education Programme. A trained teacher, he left the formal education sector in 1985. In 1987 he was exposed to the educational power of drama through the theatre and workshop methods of Manchester based ‘Frontline: Culture & Education’. Frontline were developing educational praxis with disaffected inner city communities based on models of intervention-for-empowerment developed by Latin American and African educationalists/theatre practitioners sensitive to the use of education as a tool for colonisation. In 1988 Jim went to Manchester to work with Frontline. Two years later he returned to establish a Frontline group in Derry. He has since worked in the area of cultural production, performance and community education in Derry. This work has seen him develop extensive skills in workshop and project facilitation. Jim has for 13 years been a member of the Bloody Sunday Organising Committee which coordinates a series of educational events around the anniversary of Bloody Sunday on the themes of Justice and Human Rights. He is a co-founder and director of Gaslight Productions and co-developed the ‘epilogues’ Workshop Education Programme with Stephen Gargan. He was executive producer on Gaslight’s first project, the drama-documentary film SUNDAY (about the events of Bloody Sunday).