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MaterialsMaterials 1 - Reading text:
What made me the way I am?
In our regular column inviting contributors to reflect on how their past has affected their current life, award
winning documentary maker, Summer Avery, reflects on how her family history influenced her choice of career.
My parents came from totally different backgrounds. My dad, Dave, comes from a mining village in Yorkshire.
For generations, all the boys in his family went down the pit and that's what dad was going to do, too. But in
the 1980s they started closing down the mines and suddenly there was no work for young men like my dad.
My mum, Lucy, came from a very different family. Her father was a diplomat, Mum went to boarding school
because her parents lived abroad. They expected her to go to Oxford or Cambridge University and then do
an important job, but she was a rebellious girl.
The early 1980s in the UK was a time of great change. Big industries were closing down and people from
communities like my dad's were losing their jobs and their hope. But in other places, new enterprises were
starting up and some people were getting very rich very quickly.
These changes led to political protests and some people rejected mainstream lifestyles altogether. Among
those people were the 'New Age Travellers.' They lived in old lorries and buses and travelled from one
music festival to another. These lorries and buses used to travel together in convoys and they were
unpopular with many people. The police kept breaking up the convoys and closing down the festivals. The
travellers kept regrouping and planning more festivals. There used to be a very popular free festival at
Stonehenge* on Summer Solstice*. In 1985, the Travellers were determined to hold this festival and huge
numbers joined the convoys. Two of the people who went to join the peace convoy were my mum, who had
decided to run away from school and my dad, who had decided to escape unemployment by going on the
road. That is where they met - when they were arrested at Stonehenge! It's funny to think that they would
never have met if they hadn't gone to that festival.
They were only seventeen years old. I was born exactly one year later on Summer Solstice 1986 – that's
why they called me Summer. Both families were really shocked and disappointed. I didn't even meet my
grandparents until I was seven. When I was little we travelled round Europe in an old double-decker bus. My
dad's a talented musician and my mum was good at gymnastics, so they joined this strange alternative circus
called 'Anarkurkus'. There were no animals or any of the usual circus things – just human performers doing
really crazy things.
I didn't have a very conventional way of life as a child. I didn't go to school. We never ate meat. We went to
lots of music festivals and political demonstrations. I learned a lot about being an outsider. In some places
people were really hostile. There was no need for this; everyone in our circus was very gentle and very
honest. People are just afraid of difference. I'm sure it is this early experience that made me interested in
how society treats minority groups. I doubt I'd be so interested in social exclusion if I hadn't experienced it. It
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