The BBC Creative Archive worked with the NOISE festival to provide participants with a series of ground-breaking news clips that represent some of the world's most powerful news stories from the last 25 years.
NOISE artists were invited to use one of the clips to create a personal documentary piece based on how that event had affected their lives, their family or their community.

The winner of the project was Jessica Jane Emmet, 24 from Manchester

Jessica Jane's piece used the Vietnamese Boat people news footage with her own images and voice over to create an auto-biographical film based on her own experiences as a Vietnamese refugee. Jessica's birth mother was a Vietamese Asylum Seeker who went to Hong Kong after the Vietnam War. She was staying in a refugee camp when Jessica was born and had to give her baby up.

Jessica says: "NOISE has given me the chance to work in a way I never had before. I'm normally an artist that uses film and photography to explore my adoption through installation, interactive and performance pieces but I had never done a pure documentary. What was lovely about the "My Life in the News"? was I was able to work with actual news footage from a time that so very much affected my history; footage I had never seen before which I was able to mix it with images from my own family album.

By planning and editing I really managed to explain all of the complex feelings about my life into a five minute documentary - something I have never achieved before by just talking about it. It felt good to be able to do a documentary from my own point of view. The NOISE project allowed me to put a more human side to something that was, at the time, all over the media."?

As part of the prize, Jessica spent a day with the BBC News team in London and her blog of her experiences is linked below. In addition, Jessica has secured a two year residency at Let's Go Global, a Manchester based television community channel that NOISE introduced to Jessica. Two outcomes that will help Jessica to get an insight into the highly competitive television industry.

"I have always been interested in working in television but I never had the opportunity to. NOISE really allowed me to work on something new and take a risk on something a bit different from my normal art practice. As a result of winning, I am applying to a business scheme with a view to starting my own art business. I'm very excited!"?

"Jessica with the BBC Vietnamese World Service team"?

Jessica's blog

"Until this day, I had never met a person from Vietnam that I could talk to face to face. Because I'm adopted, all my life the Vietnamese community has been closed to me since my friends and family have no ties to that community.

I was nervous I wasn't going to be Vietnamese enough, or get in the way of their work, but I was welcomed with enthusiasm and friendliness. I had lunch and met some of the team that worked with the Vietnamese World Service. Then I was left to just talk for 2 hours. To anyone else this may not seem much, but for me, a person who never had anyone to ask "what is it actually like to be Vietnamese?" to another person who is Vietnamese themselves just felt liberating."

Click here to read Jessica's blog

Click here to view Jessica's Profile