This story is the story of a failure, but sometimes failures are also the beginning of a revolution.
This story is the beginning of a failure, but sometimes failures are also the beginning of a revolution.
For the last two years I've been deeply engaged in a personal project that was a fun way to
teach new technologies to kids, but also a sort of sociological enquire, an amazing
individual experiment, 100% made on a smartphone.
We are in the suburbs of Brussels, the capital of Europe.
Although I feel like a complete stranger in any place I go, I've always been fascinated
by the diversity of the city, so many countries, languages, talents.
So many individuals and communities, so many conflicts and contradictions.
From my perspective, I really had the impression that in this city people do not talk a lot
to each other, and so the idea was really to give them a tool to help them communicate
with each other.
So I said to myself, let's give these kids a form of expression that is effective, modern
and accessible.
Let's teach them how to use their own smartphone to make videos, like the one that you're watching
right now, without big expensive computers, without the filters of media or politics.
There's no contradiction in being poor and having a smartphone, because a smartphone
is a simple object that helps you connect to your own world, to the people you love,
to the job that you dream about.
This is the world in which we live, this is the world that I want to know more about.
And so this crazy adventure began.
I will teach groups of kids how to film, to edit and to post online the wrong point of
the video.
And at the same time, I will use my own smartphone to meet new people.
I will ask ten people that live or work in underleg to share their story with us, because
it sounds fun, doesn't it?
I've been working in the neighborhood for about, I think, five, six years now.
The reputation of the neighborhood is not as good, or why?
I think it started with the riots in, I think, 1999.
That's where the rumors started in the media, and employment is pretty bad, although they're
very motivated, they don't often get chances.
So for me, it's very simple, what happens here, it's just people who express themselves.
It's like someone who, we will say, you are a woman, you have no right to speak, well,
they do it anyway.
But that, in terms of politics, it simply means that there are barriers that are franchisable.
I got financial support, I got political support, I really did my best to involve as many people
as possible.
It has never been easy, but sometimes it has been pretty awesome.
I wrote this project in December 2014, a few weeks before Charlie Hebdo's attack in Paris.
Because, like many others, I could clearly see the tension rising in the peripheries
of Europe, and I was so naive to think that I could change that.
Because war is a product of fear, fear of technology, fear of different cultures.
But all in all, fear is just a product of ignorance.
So my point was, let's learn together how to use a machine, so that we can use it to
connect humans.
I think that the project failed because not many people participated in the end.
Europe is more in danger than ever, and nobody knows what is going to happen.
But failure is what makes us learn.
I've learned a lot thanks to this project, and it's your turn.
Use your smartphone, your heart, whatever.
Try to communicate more and better with the people around you.
Join the smart revolution.
And one day, if someone asks how this revolution started, you may say, well, once upon a time,
there was an under-left.
