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 Walt…

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…

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 l…

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 gr…

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 …

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 Pa…

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 administrator…

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 w…

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 offer…

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…

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…

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, port…

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.

A 3- and a 4-year-old introduce a child's-eye view of life. A few of us are lucky -we go to good nurseries But it's not such a happy story for the rest. Every day millions of parents and children are suffering because of the shortage of n…

New mining technology.

Follows the supporters of Tottenham Hotspur Association Football Club, hearing about their passions, and also both sides of the story around hooliganism.