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A Green candidate in the upcoming loal elections in London has told of her "terrifying" expeerience as she faced ten years in jail for smuggling drugs into America. Carlotta Allum was caught at Los Angeles airport with 10,000 ecstasy tablets. She was acting as a drugs mule for a Leeds drug dealer. Now aged 54, she runs the Stretch charity based in Brixton, south west London, helping drug addicts, many of them homeless, prisoners, and other vulnerable people.
Transcript
00:00Hello, my name's Carlotta Allam and I am a PhD student at Central St Martins, but I also run my
00:09own charity and I have done for almost 20 years.
00:12I founded my charity out of a personal life experience.
00:17I was a trained art teacher, but I spent some time in prison and I couldn't get a job.
00:22So I started working with prisoners because I wanted to put something back because I realised how lucky I was.
00:29And I worked with prisoners trying to bring art and culture into their lives.
00:34I used my master's in museums and education to work with artists and bring objects and storytelling in a way
00:42into their lives.
00:42And then I found digital storytelling and it was the perfect culmination of everything that I was trying to do.
00:50So for the last 10 years, I've been working in storytelling with prisoners.
00:55And I'm lucky enough to be practice led and fully funded as a PhD candidate at Central St Martins because
01:02I worked with them and they saw what I was doing and the effect it was having on the prisoners.
01:06I'm really passionate about tapping into the authentic voice of the prisoner.
01:13So I started by using my own experience and that makes me a credible messenger, which is something I've only
01:22discovered since my research has started, how important that is and how credible messengers and people with lived experience should
01:32be using their experience to give back.
01:35You
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