The Prince eyes the Papparazzi – Building a Wall of Greatness across the Commonwealth
The King & I: At the Wall of Greatness
I was awarded a Commonwealth Professional Fellowship through the Association of Commonwealth Universities and the Commonwealth Foundation in 2007.
My role was multi-functional – to research the gaps in outreach and make recommendations for strengthening the capacities of Commonwealth Civil Society Organisations (C-CSOs) across conventional to the embryonic new media arena and as a media specialist to advise and devise initiatives to enhance the visibility of initiatives of the Commonwealth Foundation (CF) in the build-up to and across the hosting and staging of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGM) from planning at the Commonwealth Secretariat/CF in London, across to Africa, Uganda 2007 towards the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago in 2009.
And as an aside, I was also assigned to keep safe the famous humanitarian and hostage negotiator, Terry Waite – lest someone meant him harm or a repeat of the hostage event!
The flagship civil society event of the Commonwealth is the Commonwealth People’s Forum (CPF) which brings together the voices and talents of civil society whose ideas are collated and feed into the decisions of CHOGM through interface with the Prince and the CPF communique.
Knowing how difficult it would be with the crowds that will flock in to be a part of the formal opening and tour by Prince Charles who represented the Queen at the CPF, I hastily grabbed my cameras and headed to the venue next door to the hotel to get photographs and video footage of the many booths set up by civil society. As the hot African climate is not conducive to jackets and not to be encumbered as I took visuals, I left my jacket as I intended to return before the Prince’s visit to assume my other role of media engagement.
I was halfway through capturing the displays when I saw crowds surging towards one end of the venue, to realise that the Prince had arrived earlier than scheduled. I knew I would miss crucial moments if I returned to the hotel for my jacket. I hastily positioned myself to capture some of the Prince’s interactions with the rich cultural experience and exposition of ideas we had put together at the CPF. As the crowd pushed in, I slipped in against the barriers to be in direct line to capture footage. The Prince’s security, whose acquaintance I had made the day earlier in less amiable circumstances, graciously let me in and then blocked off others trying to surge in.
And so it was I was within close range to capture these close interactions between the Prince and members of the Commonwealth sharing their ideas for a stronger Commonwealth and a better world at the Wall of Greatness of the Commonwealth People’s Forum. Seeing this, our very alert photographer of the CPF, captured the Prince looking at me with his characteristic bemusement as I straddled the roles of paparazzi and conduit of the voice of the people at the Commonwealth People’s Forum!
Similarly too, not only was I in the front row of capturing the formal opening ceremony of the CPF but I gained exclusive footage of the closed-door engagement of the Prince with civil society leaders, along with his sharing teatime and some one-on-one time with citizens of the Commonwealth!
If ever there was a cat may look at a King-in-Waiting this was it. It would be another fifteen years before he would be crowned King, but the experiences of the Commonwealth People’s Forum remains a crowning moment in my multi-purposed public engagements.