Gladys C Agyemang in A Silent Crisis

A SINGLE mother’s efforts to combat women’s loneliness in Islington are the focus of a short documentary about how coming together enriches our lives.

Gladys C Agyemang started the Women’s Link Project (WLP) – previously the Black Women’s Link Project – from her Cally flat in 2021, to tackle the stigma of isolation and create a space where women could meet and talk about their lives and experiences of loneliness.

She was “shocked” when a filmmaker reached out to her two years ago to ask if he could use her story in his documentary, A Silent Crisis, after reading a news article about the WLP. Ms Agyemang told the Tribune: “I wasn’t expecting this at all. I thought I was just doing something to help the community – it’s incredible that things like this can happen.”

She started WLP during the pandemic, organising Zoom calls at first and face-to-face sessions later on, where women could “just sit there and talk about anything – what their week is like, how they’re feeling, how to overcome loneliness”.

Directed by Italian filmmaker Filippo Mira, A Silent Crisis spotlights two women who have benefited from Ms Agyemang’s project, as well as her daughter, the writer and campaigner Jacqueline Courtenay.

Filmmaker Filippo Mira shooting the film

“Mental health is increasingly acknowledged, but loneliness still has shame and stigma attached to it,” said Mr Mira, who made the documentary on a shoestring budget.

“I’m proud that it has resonated with such a wide variety of people. It’s about single mothers, but it resonated with young men, too – they saw themselves, even if their story was completely different.”

A Silent Crisis won two film festival awards for best short.

It was after a conversation with Mr Mira that Ms Agyemang, who moved from Ghana to London 30 years ago, decided that her organisation would no longer cater exclusively to black women, as she had first envisaged it.

She said: “It’s a big culture shock, coming to another country, and you don’t have any network of people to talk to. Mr Mira was coming from Italy and experiencing loneliness himself – it is a universal health problem.

“So I thought, why not open [WLP] for everyone to come? It is still important to share between black women, but loneliness does not affect one race, it affects everyone.”

She hopes that the documentary will encourage people to take loneliness seriously, and that her own story will inspire people, too.

“If you have any idea that you want to put into practice, you can do it,” Ms Agyemang added. “I’m a black woman, I’m an African, and I came here and had my kids and my grandkids and I’m doing something like this.”

She now wants to formalise WLP into a registered charity and is looking for trustees to join the project.

A Silent Crisis will be screened tomorrow (Saturday) between 12pm and 4pm at West Library, off Caledonian Road.