Keyy Stories: a platform of mini-documentaries (and accompanying articles) telling the stories of great people doing great things…because, everyone has a story to tell.

These docos are rooted in humanity. They are relevant, poignant, enlightening and heart-warming. They will open your mind and make you think differently. They will break down your judgements and open your eyes to new ways of seeing.

Our first two stories...

THE UNMENTIONABLES

We recently travelled to Europe to capture our very first two Keyy Stories. In Athens, we spent a week with The Unmentionables, an organisation working with refugees to provide them with ‘unmentionable’ items such as underwear and female sanitary products, as well as providing them with vital access to education around sexual health, protection and personal hygiene.

To really look deeply into how and why The Unmentionables are working to restore dignity in the lives of forcibly displaced people was a confronting awakening to what human dignity actually is and what it means to have it taken away. In planning for this shoot, we weren’t able to clearly articulate what ‘dignity’ is. Only after hearing harrowing stories from some refugees did we realise that our understanding of dignity only just skims the surface. It is only when our dignity is taken from us that we are able to truly understand what it actually is.

We are so grateful to The Unmentionables and the displaced people there, for letting us in and trusting us with their stories and their work.

TEMPUS NOVO

In Leeds, we spent some time with Tempus Novo, who work closely with ex-prisoners in helping them gain employment upon release in order to get their lives back on track. It would be insincere to say that we went into this with an open mind and no judgement. Two very clear questions arose for us in planning and understanding the narrative of this story: Why should we help people who’ve done the wrong thing? Why do they deserve a second chance? Here, our personal judgements were broken down - 30-40% of people in the prison are people who come from poverty; who don’t know anything else. They’ve been brought up in dysfunctional families. They end up in care and often suffer horrendous sexual abuse while there.

Ex-prisoners getting their lives back on track starts with self-worth. And self-worth comes from having somewhere to live and a regular income; a routine; somewhere to be each day. A new question arose for us: If our lives hadn’t been so privileged - if we’d have had the same start in life as them, wouldn’t we find ourselves in a similar position? ...Looking just a little deeper beyond the surface can do so much.

Why are we doing this?

Our time in Europe impacted us both deeply and further cemented in us the importance of this platform. This is a passion-project. A platform created by story-tellers who are story-lovers. We believe that it is through story that we can truly connect and begin to understand others. Story helps to transcend boundaries and differences. Whilst somewhat a selfish project (it's a chance for us to put our creative juices into motion and tell the stories we’ve always wanted to tell), we also hope to share this with a wider audience so that we can, in turn, create a ripple effect of influence and change. That’s our goal - quite big, yes, but isn’t that the true power of story?

What we hope it to become:

This platform, so far, is entirely self-funded. We’d be lying if we said we didn’t want this to be picked up by, say, a major Australian airline, and shown in-flight to any willing passengers. We’d be lying if we said we weren’t hoping for some kind of funding support from relevant, in-line organisations (underwear/female hygiene companies, come at us!). We want these stories to be told. We want theses stories to be seen and heard. We want ideas to be challenged and minds to be opened. We want to pique interest, create empathy and educate in a unique way.

And we don’t just want to tell the stories of charities or organisations helping people in need (albeit, these stories are extremely important to us and we aim to tell as many of them as we can). We want to tell the story of an artist, an athlete, a musician, an environmentalist, a scientist. (So if you’re any of those things, don’t be afraid to reach out and say hello!)

That’s all for now… we can’t wait to share our more detailed blogs with you on The Unmentionables and Tempus Novo, and of course, we can’t wait to get these docos out there for everyone to see (that’s a little further down-the-track though, while we prepare our pitch to an Aussie Airline…).

Everyone has a story - we want them to be told. And heard.