Open Space

In Liverpool today you can hardly turn a corner without ending up in yet another film report on the city's decline. Why, then, are so many Liverpudlians still frustrated by television's inability to recognise their real needs? Julie Walters , no stranger to life on Merseyside, returns to show what happened when those same people - from Croxteth, from. Bootle, from Liverpool 8 - were given the power to make programmes that said exactly what they wanted them to say...

The A5 special unit inside Holloway is the only therapeutic wing for women in the whole British prison system. Evidence is coming to light that some authorities would like to see it closed down. Bernadette Shannon was there for more than a year and on her release wanted to make a film about it. Community Programmes got in touch with the Home Office, the Home Office got in touch with the Governor. The Governor said no....

Three years ago Christine Ridg well and her two young daughters were paid a rare visit by her ex-husband. Although Christine had been granted custody of the girls, he snatched them and took them to his new home in Italy. She tells of her long and harrowing fight for her children. Her case is not unique: right now at least 500 children, snatched from Britain, are still outside the country, outside our laws.

The recently ended 15-week strike by Asian textile workers at Aire Valley Yarns in West Yorkshire was hardly reported outside Bradford. Yet today, against a background of increasing racial hostility, this Asian community often faces the grim choice of working in sweat shop conditions, or not working at all. This programme made by the Strikers Support Committee demonstrates the growing spirit of resistance within the Asian community.

Old people now occupy half the country's hospital beds. They are mostly dependent on the comprehensive,care of the NHS. Dr Peter Fisher is the kind of hospital doctor who looks after them. He works at Banbury's Horton Hospital - the sort of local general hospital we all rely Oh. But Dr Fisher and some of his consultant colleagues feel that the NHS is now in real danger from Government cuts and privatisation. A week in his working life explains why we should np longer take him for granted... Made in co-operation with the NHS Consultants Association

Music and movement in a doctor s waiting room? Local girls accosting you on the street to ask your views on health? Your doctor sending a social worker round to help sort out your bad housing? That's what happens in Liverpool at Princes Park Health Centre where doctors and nurses are tackling the root causes of bad health head-on. Made in co-operation with the PRINCES PARK HEALTH CENTRE

Peter Pan fights for life! -as the people of North Kensington oppose plans to close the much-loved children's ward at their local hospital. Unhappily cast as Captain Hook and his cut-throat crew are the doctors and nurses and administrators of the Paddington and North Kensington Health Authority. They want to improve children's services in the district by centralising them at a brand-new unit being built in Paddington. The professional and lay members of the health authority have to find a solution which marries medical excellence and the community's wishes-and all within a reduced budget.

Holiday time in Open Space this week. The drivers and clippies of Putney Bus Garage step off their buses on to the somewhat faster route of the world's largest corkscrew rollercoaster. That's just one of the terrors and delights they try with their families during a day out at Britain's largest pleasure park, Alton Towers In Staffordshire. But no day out is complete without an argument or three on the long journey home. The kids slept right through it.

Lots of people think they could do social work, even more think that they know what social workers do -well you've seen Juliet Bravo handed confidential files from her social worker husband and even Coronation Street's Ken Barlow was offered the job of a Senior Officer. Open Space followed a group of social workers in South Wales during three days in June.

Cameraman, director, interviewer Jon Alpert is the only 'Independent' whose work appears regularly - and unedited - on American network television, on NBC's prestigious Today programme. The unique quality of his reporting, whether it's on squatters in Philadelphia, or guerrillas in El Salvador, comes from a technique he learnt on the streets of his local community in New York where he and his wife Keiko Tsuno have run Downtown Community Television since 1972. They hold free classes for anyone interested in using video as a community resource, and lend equipment to their ' graduates ' who include tenants' associations, trade unions pressure groups of all kinds and high school students, and whose tapes are shown on the streets, in meeting-halls, in private homes, in schools and on local cable television.

A documentary by Jon Alpert and Kelko Tsuno for New York's Downtown Community Television Centre. A heart-attack victim is rushed into the emergency room with no pulse. Miraculously, the doctors bring him back to life, but two days later he is dead. Budgets, cut-backs, broken equipment and lack of supplies delayed the surgery that could have saved his life. The programme follows patients in two New York hospitals - one public, one private - to illustrate the vast differences in health care the two systems offer. At a time when our own National Health Service is under increasing threat this chilling picture of what happens in America raises disturbing questions about what could happen here.

Following public reaction to three Open Space films about the NHS, tonight's programme presents a major debate about the future of the Health Service. The participants all have a vital stake in the issues-whether as doctors or nurses, porters or patients. Chaired by MARGO MACDONALD

A local community arts group echo the events staged by the Victorians in Belfast’s Botanical Gardens, resulting in Midsummer magic. Live music, balloon ascents and elaborate theatrics all feature.