Coalfields Regeneration Trust: Films of Action
Facilitator & Community Screenings Producer
Nov 2019 – July 2022
FILMS OF ACTION developed out of conversations with the Coalfields Regeneration Trust (CRT) which is dedicated to supporting and improving the quality of life for the people living in former coalmining communities across the UK. In Scotland, CRT works with 88 communities particularly through their Coalfields Community Futures programme which enables communities to devise a community Action Plan making a case for the things that the community thinks are important and wishes to make happen. From these Community Action Plans, the potential and scope for this collaborative creative regeneration project highlighted the rich and varied coalfield communities’ heritage.
The idea for this filmmaking project, was the belief that the coalfield communities have a plethora of positive and inspiring stories to tell that go way beyond their coalmining heritage.
The Covid-19 pandemic brought with it an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the coalfield communities and demonstrate how resilient they are, and how able they are to find solutions to their own challenges and quickly self-organise to support residents who are vulnerable or in need. It was also an opportunity to capture evidence of the impact lockdown has had on lonely, disabled and elderly people trapped in their own homes and to find out from them also what the contact via local committees – such as befriending phone calls, food parcels and deliveries – had on them.
Drawing on this, CRT supported groups and families inspired to explore and celebrate shared and personal narratives of their experience of the pandemic. I made films with communities and worked with experienced filmmaker Anne Milne who develops innovative collective filmmaking techniques across generations within the communities.
As screening spaces were still closed in Autumn 2020, we put the films online where they collectively had over 5000 views!
In 2022, I then collaborated with six communities to bring the films local people had made during the project to the big screen in their own village and community space, screening them to their friends, family and neighbours. The project notionally concluded with a sharing event as part of the Folk Film Gathering in the Scottish Storytelling Centre in June 2022. But the conversation with CRT about the importance of bringing people together through film screenings and filmmaking continues…
The opportunity to work with the Coalfields Regeneration Trust set up an exciting grassroots project with the potential to grow across the Trust’s extensive network of coalfield communities in Scotland.
Watch the FILMS OF ACTION here: bit.ly/CRTFilms
Watch how the community screenings happened: bit.ly/CRTTogether
IMAGES: Loganlea Miners Social and Charitable Society