A changing landscape

The Caldecot Centre at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of London’s leading dedicated HIV clinics, providing medical, social and welfare support to people living with HIV across south east London. Based in Camberwell, the centre serves a richly diverse community and is at the forefront of NHS efforts to re-engage patients, challenge stigma, and move the national conversation about HIV firmly.

Despite extraordinary advances in HIV treatment – people living with HIV today can expect a normal life expectancy on effective medication – stigma remains one of the biggest barriers to diagnosis and care. The Caldecot Centre came to Nutmeg with an ambitious and deeply human brief: to create a film series that would challenge outdated perceptions, normalise life with HIV, and encourage people across all communities to get tested and stay in treatment.
The films needed to feel real, relatable and emotionally resonant, not clinical, not cautionary. The power had to come from the people themselves.

We knew from the outset that this one called for authentic voices and unscripted truth. We worked with three south Londoners, each with a different story, a different background, and a different relationship with their diagnosis and gave them the space to speak honestly about their lives.

Ralph, from Lewisham, spoke about growing up with HIV from birth, and the transformative role that mental health support has played in his journey. Joe, from Brixton, talked about working at the Caldecot Centre itself following his own diagnosis, and the profound experience of becoming a peer mentor for others. And Margaret shared her story as a woman and mother living with HIV, bringing a perspective that is too rarely heard in public conversations about the condition.

Together, these three films form A Changing Landscape: From Uncertainty to Acceptance, a series that does exactly what its title promises. Each film is its own story; together they create something greater: a collective challenge to stigma and a quiet, powerful declaration that HIV does not define a life.

Our production approach was warm, unhurried and human. We let people speak. We trusted the stories. And we worked closely with the Caldecot Centre’s clinical team throughout to ensure the films were medically responsible as well as emotionally powerful, reinforcing medication adherence and the importance of staying engaged with care, without ever feeling like a public health lecture.

A Note on Sensitive Subject Filming: When working with people sharing personal health stories, particularly those involving stigmatised conditions, we take our duty of care extremely seriously. Every participant was fully informed about how their story would be used, provided meaningful consent, and was supported throughout the process by both the Nutmeg team and the Caldecot Centre’s clinical staff. All personal data and footage was handled in full compliance with GDPR, and stored and distributed securely throughout production and beyond. When you work with Nutmeg on sensitive healthcare projects, you can be confident that the people in front of our camera are in safe, caring and professional hands.

A Changing Landscape premiered at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton, a fitting setting for a series rooted so firmly in south London life. The audience included representatives from across public health, government and the charity sector, bringing together the organisations best placed to amplify the films’ message and carry it into communities across the capital and beyond. It was one of those evenings that reminded us why this work matters. The films and the participants at the heart of them were met with a warmth and a recognition that told us everything we needed to know.

Why It Matters: HIV stigma costs lives. It stops people getting tested. It stops people staying in treatment. It isolates people who are already managing enough. Films like A Changing Landscape exist to push back against that to replace fear and misunderstanding with honesty, humanity and hope.

We’re incredibly proud to have made this series with the Caldecot Centre, and of Ralph, Margaret and Joe for their courage and generosity in sharing their stories. As Joe put it: “a positive HIV diagnosis is not the end. It can be the beginning of a new chapter” – and these films say exactly that.