We are delighted to announce the launch of the Barnfield Video Archive Project. In a series of participant-led workshops we will be viewing and editing archive videos filmed on the estate and the local area 2008-2010 for the Well London programme.
frame grab from walking tour of Barnfield estate 2010
The workshops are both online and in-person at the HUB Herbert Pl, London SE18 3BD.
Our aim is to explore these archives and for participants to film new videos to show the changes of places and people over time. The workshops will include training in how to get good results filming with your phone. In the summer we will publicly screen the results of the project at the HUB . Date to be announced.
All are welcome! Residents past and present, young and old, people with an interest in or a connection to the area, people with an interest in local history or community development. Please share this with your friends, family and colleagues.
Frame grab from a sample of video of the feast event 2010 Barnfield Estate
Workshop dates are as follows:
Tuesday 23 May 2023 – 6:30pm-8pm
Tuesday 6 Jun 2023 – 6:30pm-8pm
Tuesday 20 Jun 2023 – 6:30pm-8pm
Tuesday 27 Jun 2023 – 6:30pm-8pm
If you are interested to join us please sign up using this link. Alternatively, if you would prefer us to contact you via phone, feel free to include your contact details, and Mark will be in touch.
Spectacle has a wide range of archive footage from the London Pride parade in 1991. This footage is available to license for your documentary or news story. Please contact us by emailing archive@spectacle.co.uk
The footage was shot for Despite TV’s documentary, ‘Out of Line’, on the subject of London Pride 1991. Having already taken an interest in documenting the LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender) political struggle as it was happening (Despite Clause 28 – 1988). This longer documentary film takes a celebratory approach to the community’s political and social wins.
The footage gives an insight into London Pride from 25 years ago, and shows the celebratory atmosphere of the event as well as the increasing number of social and political groups that had started to participate in the parade.
The full film Out of Line is available to rent or buy here. A DVD of the film is also available here.
We are happy to announce the release at COP27 of the first 2 videos shot and directed by young activists as the outcome of a Participatory Video project facilitated by Spectacle for FAO’s ‘Stories from local heroes fighting climate change, biodiversity, and malnutrition crises”
Over the last 6 months Spectacle has been supporting the United Nation agency Food and Agriculture Agency – FAO with our Participatory Video expertise in order to allow young activists from all over the world to produce short videos about their everyday struggle to mitigate climate change and develop better and more sustainable food systems. The project ‘Stories from local heroes’ aims at collecting stories from people whose communities experience the immediate impacts of climate change. Spectacle has facilitated the participatory video process to let young activists produce short documentaries about their effort in fighting malnutrition and biodiversity crisis.
Over the last 6 months Spectacle has facilitated online workshops with participants from Nepal, Nigeria, Kenya, Ecuador and Venezuela, working with them in Spanish and English and providing them with training on how to shoot good quality videos with their phone, developing their filming ideas and supporting the production of short documentaries that would illustrate stories they care about. Using our online editing experience, we engaged them in selecting and cutting the footage, directing us in the technical process of editing together the stories that would best represent their point of view.
The first two videos were launched by FAO at the United Nation conference on Climate change COP27, shown on big screens welcoming visitors to The Food and Agriculture Pavilion in Sharm El Sheikh for the duration of the conference. The first two videos are shared worldwide and will remain available on FAO’s youtube channel, which will also host 3 other videos that will be released in the coming weeks. FAO will offer Local Hero’s participants and their stories a platform to raise awareness on the effects of climate change and, more importantly, to inspire others with local initiatives aimed at mitigating the impact of climate change, improving biodiversity and access to sustainable food.
Spectacle has been pioneering Participatory Video practice and workshop based collaborative documentary making for over 30 years. Adapting to changes in technology, nature and duration of the collaborations, Spectacle has successfully deployed strategies to support existing local groups, social research participants, local stakeholders in making their own videos around the stories that most mattered to them. Spectacle provides technical training and workshop facilitation in order to allow people who have a story to tell to work together in order to share their messages with the rest of the world.
Since 2020, due to COVID related restrictions to travel and in-person activities, we have been further developing our Participatory Video practice in online working environments. We have been part of research projects based in different areas of the world, providing participants with filmmaking skills and tools to develop visual stories using the technology available to them. In tune with our long established practice, we have facilitated video making processes aiming at giving editorial power to participants. For this reason we have developed strategies not only to allow participants to record videos with their phones, but also to engage them with video editing and storytelling.
We welcome any opportunity to explore collaborations with research groups, NGOs and local communities to facilitate Participatory Video projects and develop participant-led video production.
Read more about our participatory model and past projects.
Da poche settimane si è insediato in Italia un nuovo Governo guidato da Giorgia Meloni, capo del partito di destra Fratelli d’Italia, erede della destra post fascista italiana. Tra le prime iniziative, il Governo ha emanato un decreto legge che criminalizza chiunque partecipi a raduni non autorizzati con più di 50 persone. L’obiettivo dichiarato sono i rave parties i cui organizzatori e partecipanti saranno colpiti da pene detentive fino a 6 anni.
Exodus: Movement of Jah People è un film documentario che guarda al complesso mondo della ‘rave culture’ e mostra cosa si colpisce davvero attraverso la sua criminalizzazione. Ambientato in Inghilterra negli anni ’90, il documentario appare particolarmente rilevante oggi, specialmente in Italia: ora come allora, in nome della legalità – definita da nuove leggi – si criminalizzano organizzatori e frequentatori di rave parties, visti come minaccia all’ordine pubblico.
Usa il codice promozionale ExodusITA2022 per avere accesso al noleggio gratuito del film. Il codice è valido fino alla fine di Novembre 2022
Prodotto da Spectacle per Arte nel 1996 e trasmesso in Italia dalla RAI, il film racconta la storia del collettivo Exodus, nato nella cittadina di Luton nei primi anni ’90. Il collettivo offre risposte utopistiche alla dilagante povertà, criminalità, droga, disoccupazione e disgregazione della comunità locale attraverso l’autorganizzazione e il collettivismo, finanziando le proprie attività attraverso l’organizzazione di grandi feste.
Exodus é un gruppo fondato sul lavoro collettivo ed usa come principio guida dell’organizzazione il “DIY”- cultura del fai da te: feste gratuite, ristrutturazione di abitazioni e attività agricole come pratiche di autorganizzazione e autosufficienza. Questo film documenta, tramite interviste ai membri di Exodus, anche gli interventi da parte della polizia per criminalizzare ed osteggiare il collettivo e le sue attività.
Per chi volesse saperne di più sul collettivo e la sua guerra contro criminalizzazione e pregiudizio, Spectacle ha raccolto in un archivio video diversi film prodotti nel corso degli anni ’90, incluso Exodus from Babylon in cui si approfondiscono i tentativi di criminalizzazione del collettivo.
L’ archivio video contiene, inoltre, materiale inedito raccolto durante il lavoro di produzione svolto in collaborazione con i membri del collettivo.
Usa il codice promozionale ExodusITA2022 per avere accesso al noleggio gratuito di Exodus: Movement of Jah People. Il codice è valido fino alla fine di Novembre 2022.
Use the free rent promo code ExodusEn2022 if you want to watch the original version of Exodus: Movement of Jah People. Valid until the end of November 2022.
Ordinance Survey map of Current Whitehill and Bordon regeneration plans
12 years ago, Spectacle investigated the former military towns of Bordon and Whitehill in Hampshire, which were part of a plan by the UK Government’s Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), to turn these two neighbouring towns into an ‘Eco-Town’. An effort to create a self-sustaining, eco-friendly town to combat the threat of climate change. The HCA no longer exists and funding for the project was cut in half in 2010. There have been new developments over the past decade such as Prince Phillip Park, the Green Loop, and Quebec Park, previously the Quebec Barracks. Are these developments true to their original Eco-Town goals, or as some say, greenwashing? Are the new homes truly affordable housing for local residents? An expensive lost opportunity?
The UK eco-town plans originally set up in 2007 had taken inspiration from the European eco cities of Amersfoort, the Netherlands, Freiburg, Germany, Hammarby, Sjöstad, Sweden, Zaragoza, Spain and also Dongtan in China. The UK set up its own guidelines based on these case studies;
Eco-towns must be new distinct settlements, separated but well linked to surrounding towns
Consist of at least 5,000 new homes, 30%-50% of which need to be affordable housing and the town overall reaching zero carbon standards.
They must also contain a variety of facilities including a secondary school, a retail centre, business and leisure spaces to provide local employment and entertainment
Become the lead example for at least one area of environmental sustainability and a new management body should be set up to help the development of the town.
It must be easy for residents to default to a more sustainable lifestyle, including reducing the use of cars in favour of cycling or walking.
For the developers, there must be a focus on conserving energy for new construction projects that need to be energy and resource efficient and be powered by renewable energy.
In 2008 there was a shortlist of 15 planned sites across the UK for eco-town development, by 2010 there were 4 successful bids, including the garrison town of Bordon. In the May 2010 general election, Labour lost to a Conservative and Lib Dem coalition. This resulted in the funding for the eco-towns, planned by the previous government, to be cut in half. The standards for the eco-town developments were also lowered, with only Northwest Bicester in Oxfordshire still being developed closely to the original guidelines. The other 3 only needing, by law, to cover the standard building requirements of any new suburban housing model. All original eco-town development plans nationwide were archived and shelved in 2012.
Plans to regenerate Bordon into an eco-town continued, leading to various construction plans, some of which are still being built. The largest construction project is Prince Phillip Park which intends to build over 2,400 new sustainable homes on the north west of the town, beside the upper half of Hogmoor inclosure. The current residents of Bordon are not generally approving of the plans, with the Park’s Facebook page currently only having 2.5 stars out of 5. Some of the main complaints being the loss of woodland for the area, the unaffordability to buy or rent one of the new homes, and what are considered to be poorly thought out designs.
The eco-friendly marketing of the Park by the The Whitehill & Bordon Regeneration Company, a joint venture between Dorchester Regeneration and Taylor Wimpey UK, could be accused of ‘greenwashing’, or overstating the environmental sustainability of the developments. For instance, the advertised ‘Green Spaces’ in the park are not new, but forested areas that were already there and that are now enclosed in the Park’s vicinity. They claim they are going to build new green spaces, however it would appear from the Prince Phillip Park timeline there have still not been any new green spaces created. Many residents are unhappy and feel their wishes for the regeneration of existing built areas, such as Bordon High Street, have been ignored.
A map of The Green Loop
Another plan for sustainability in Bordon and Whitehill is ‘The Green Loop”. This is a walkable and bikeable trail encompassing the towns to encourage residents to travel around the area on foot and to stop using their cars. On the surface it does comply with the original eco-town goal of having residents reduce the use of their cars. This plan has been praised and awarded more for its potential than its practical pay-off. Winning the ‘Best Project’ and ‘Best in Region’ awards by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) for its incorporation of an app called BetterPoints which would reward users of the loop for their activity and the Whitehill Town Council’s plan to collect drone footage of the users to see their activity day-to-day. The idea of the Green Loop is a sustainable one if it becomes a success with the residents of Bordon and Whitehill, but it requires their action for it to work, relying on them for the reduction of emissions from the town, rather than actually implementing forms of green public transport.
Much like Prince Phillip Park, the Green Loop also does not include any newly created green spaces, relying on spaces that are already there, so does not actually make the town any greener. As for how useful it is to the residents, most work outside of Bordon and have to commute away from the town anyway, which is not helped by the fact that there are very few plans to renovate old areas of the town which could otherwise provide local employment. For example, the old fire station was converted into an ‘ecostation’ in 2012, but has not seen much use since the change.
The old Bordon Fire Station before it’s renovation
Not all changes to the town have been met with hostility however. The Quebec Barracks, formerly owned by the Ministry of Defense, was sold in 2013 to the government’s Homes and Communities Agency. This agency no longer exists as it was split into Homes England and the Regulator of Social Housing. The Quebec Barracks development is listed Under Schemes Confirmed by Homes England. It cites as both the lead partner and developing organization as Swaythling Housing Society Limited, who in turn manage the subsidiaries for the company Abri, named as the developers of Quebec Park on their website.
Abri is a non-profit organization regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. In Quebec Park they have built 65 for-sale homes, 10 shared ownership and 25 affordable rent houses. Two former Barracks buildings were also converted into an employment centre and ‘Café 1759’. Already this new housing site avoids many of the issues faced by Prince Phillip Park, provides affordable housing, encourages local employment and the café is proving to be popular with residents as it has a 4.5 out of 5 on google and a 4.8 out of 5 on Facebook. It is also sustainable for the local environment, being solely built on a brownfield site and the housing itself designed to be environmentally friendly, with construction planned as to be ‘fabric first’ and the houses are also Low Carbon Homes.
Eco-towns are a controversial subject, not only within Bordon but in other areas given the go-ahead for development. The Rackheath eco-town in Norwich has seen similar opposition from the local population in the form of the Stop Norwich UrBanisation organisation (SNUB). Spectacle interviewed SNUB member Stephen Heard in 2010. Creating a zero-carbon emission settlement appears to be much more of a troubling endeavour and requires careful in-depth planning as well as close consultation with the residents affected by the change. As more pressure builds on the government to make serious, nationwide action on climate change, should there be another attempt for sustainable development to UK towns and how strict should the guidelines for development be? How could we stop false promises and greenwashing from occurring in these plans? And how could we ensure their success?
We are pleased to announce that we are meeting at the Lewington Community Centre (9, Eugenia Road, London SE16 2RU), on the Silwood Estate, on Monday May 23rd 2022 to watch with residents extracts from the Silwood Video Archive. The screening event will start at 6.30 pm and will be both live and online.
The event is open to anyone who lives or lived on the Silwood Estate, or is just interested in its history.
The Silwood video archive contains footage shot on the estate since 2001 to the present by Silwood residents and Spectacle, documenting the impact of the regeneration on the local community and everyday life and activities on the estate. Sections of this archive have been digitised and discussed with residents in online workshops as part of the Digitally Democratising Archives project, funded by the National Lottery and The Audience Agency.
It will be possible to attend the event remotely by joining this zoom link.
If you want to join the Silwood Video archive project and have access to future workshops and to the video archive, please sign up to the group by using this link
The Silwood Archive project is supported by The Audience Agency’s Digitally Democratising Archives project thanks to funding from DCMS and the National Lottery, as part of The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s, Digital Skills for Heritage initiative.
Except where noted and excluding company and organisation logos this work is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) Licence Please attribute as: “Silwood Archive Project (2022) by Spectacle Media CIC supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, licensed under CC BY 40
Brian Barnes MBE made his mark on London, and his native Battersea in particular, as both an artist and community activist. Whilst some of his most iconic murals have been lost, many remain and continue to brighten the urban streetscapes they occupy. These include Nuclear Dawn (1981) in Brixton and the Stockwell Memorial (2001). Sadly, Brian passed away in November of last year (2021). To celebrate his work we will be releasing a series of short films featuring Brian talking about his process and the political impulse that shapes his work.
Spectacle filmed many interviews with Brian Barnes over the years covering both his art and activism. The first of our films on Brian Barnes was filmed by students on one of Spectacles training courses. It features Brian discussing the his Stockwell Memorial mural and can be seen in full here:
Participatory Archive Video Project exploring the regeneration of Silwood Estate, Lewisham
Summary
In March we have wrapped up the final stages of our Digitally Democratising Archives project, funded by the National Lottery and The Audience Agency.
The aim of the project was to open the Silwood archive, for the first time since filming began, and to invite the Silwood community to watch, comment on, and hopefully begin a participatory editing process which will draw out the story(ies) of Silwood.
Our project has gone largely as planned. All the aspects of workshops that we envisioned have happened. Participants have enjoyed watching and discussing the archive. Rather than stopping after 6 workshops we decided to maximise momentum by running a workshop every week for the duration of the project.
Online archive based participatory video workshops
Outcomes
Exploring the Archive
From the Silwood Archive – Residents shooting on Silwood Estate during a workshop with Spectacle
As part of this project we digitised and uploaded 392 clips from the Silwood archive. These clips covered a variety of themes including: the destruction of the estate, location shots of buildings which no longer exist, planning meetings which showcased spaces and buildings which were never built, promises made and not fulfilled, the desire for a youth centre and community centre, fly tipping, poems, and interviews with former residents.
Archive based participatory video, missing sculpture on Silwood Estate in Lewisham and Southwark
As part of the project Spectacle published a short edited video on the theme of the missing statue Neighbourly Encounters. This statue was made by the artist Uli Nimptsch and specially commissioned for the estate.This short film brings together interviews of the model for the statue, bringing a historian on to the estate to discuss the missing statue, and the community’s memories of the statue itself. It continues to be unclear when and why the statue was removed, and where it is now.
Community Engagement
This project had three levels of potential engagement. The most shallow level was through likes, views, clicks, engagement on social media, or blog posts. We regularly shared public updates about the project, and occasionally posted public edited clips or videos from the archive. At this level Spectacle’s posts on Facebook about the DDA project reached 1660 individuals and had a total of 456 engagements. This is an average of 138 reached, and 38 engagements per post. Public videos received a total of 427 views on Youtube.
Youtube playlist of videos concerning Lewisham and Southwark Silwood Estate residents
The second level of engagement was through subscription. Each blog post offered the opportunity to subscribe to a mailing list to access the archive. 26 unique participants subscribed and were given access to the 392 never before seen clips from the Silwood Archive that were uploaded during the project. Between them these 26 participants generated 1,354 views of private vimeo videos from the Silwood archive.
The third and deepest level of engagement was through participation in workshops to view, discuss, and make selections from the archive. A total of 10 participants participated in 17 workshops over the course of 4 months.
A view of a visit to the Silwood Video Archive page
We received very positive feedback from participants. Participants remarked that they felt this archive was “vital to the history of their community.” There was great enthusiasm to share the archive with new or younger community members who would not be aware of the history of the estate.
Spectacle Skills
This project has been a useful opportunity to test and develop our cataloguing, digitising workflows and our archive-based participatory workshop model.
We developed our archive-based participatory model to run online archive-based workshops using a variety of platforms, and found ways to teach participants to use these platforms effectively. Through this process we have developed our workflows and explored the best use of accessible digital tools.
Through this process we have developed workflows to transfer archive footage from tape and other legacy formats (MiniDV, DVCam, DVDs) to digital, to be uploaded to online platforms.
Image from the archive – residents edit footage shot in participatory video workshops
We have developed practices for platform sharing of video archives. We have learned how to organise clips so that the archive is easier to share with participants, and explored how to balance file-naming systems for archiving versus user-friendly labelling.
Expanding the Archive
Spectacle visited the Silwood estate on Monday the 29th of December and filmed locations and activities including ongoing construction, fly-tipping, the location where the youth club bus arrives, the new community garden, and general location shots around the streets of the estate.
Adding to the archive – going back to shoot location views with Silwood Estate residents
This footage will be added to the archive as part of the ongoing documentation of the Silwood estate for the past 20 years during the regeneration of the area.
Plans to Continue the Programme
We plan to continue working with the Silwood community on the archive. We have been involved with the Silwood community for over 20 years, and that relationship is one we are eager to continue.
A view of the Shard from Silwood Estate
Further, this experience has given us confidence to push forward and expand the model. We are eager to use this archive-based participatory model to explore some of our other archives, and the skills gained in this project are easily transferable. We are keen to continue running archive-based participatory workshops with various communities drawing on our numerous other video archives.
The Silwood Archive project is supported by The Audience Agency’s Digitally Democratising Archives project thanks to funding from DCMS and the National Lottery, as part of The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s, Digital Skills for Heritage initiative.
Except where noted and excluding company and organisation logos this work is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) Licence Please attribute as: “Silwood Archive Project (2022) by Spectacle Media CIC supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, licensed under CC BY 40
It has been great spending the last 2 intense years developing remote online workshops, training courses and Participatory Video projects, sharing our expertise in video making and collaborative work with dozens of passionate anthropologists, researchers, journalists, academics and aspiring filmmakers from all over the world.
We learned a lot and developed a very effective online training programme including 7 courses, all structured in a sequence of modular live 3-hour zoom sessions scheduled to work across a variety of time zones (15:00-18:30 London time, including breaks). Our online programme will continue, allowing people living on most of the planet to attend our courses. We are also excited to meet in person with our trainees, as we have been used to do for over 10 years, offering again the option to share video tools in a practical face-to-face learning experience.
The new 2-Day Video Production Workshop
The in-person 2-Day Video Production Workshop is an intensive course covering in two days all the content of the first 4 sessions of our online courses. Participants will learn how to use various types of cameras and professional sound equipment, how to film high quality video interviews and collect engaging visual stories and impactful video documentation.
The workshop will run at our London Studio in Battersea (SW11), giving participants the opportunity to learn using a range of professional and semi-professional film equipment – DSLRs, camcorders, grip equipment, professional sound recorders and microphones – during the practical shooting exercises. The In-person Video Production Workshop is also a perfect opportunity for those who attended our online programmes to refresh their skills in a fun, practical and intensive 2-day stand alone course.
Integrated with our online Video Training programme
The in-person workshops integrate flawlessly with all the online courses we already have. All our courses will be scheduled so that participants can choose their favourite mode of attendance: entirely online or a mix of in-person and online. Participants can learn the camera techniques face-to-face in our 2-day Video Production workshop (replacing the first 4 online sessions at no cost) and then attend all the specialist webinars and the video editing part (online sessions 5-8) remotely. If travelling to our studio is not practical, you can still attend the whole course entirely online.
In order to give every participant a real hands-on experience and plenty of time for shooting exercises, our in-person 2-Day Video Production workshops will have a limited number of attendees.
Visit our courses pages to explore their content and choose the one that suits you best. All courses below can be attended in combination with our new in-person 2-day Video Production workshop:
Working with the Audience Agency’s Opening archive programme – Spectacle has been taking the time to explore our historical Silwood archive. One thing that we have recently started to focus on is the paper archive that is associated with the hours of videos of the Estate. These papers detail what is in the 200+ hours of footage, they show the themes that we were thinking about at the time, and include footage logs and shot lists.
Come explore the archive with us – everyone is welcome.
It’s so helpful to have this paper archive because it gives us a sense of what we will find in these tapes, without having to watch each tape individually. This gives us the ability to dig up the kinds of footage the members of our archive video group might want to see relatively quickly.
Cataloguing footage themes
This archive sits in the cross digital-paper time, and leaves us pondering what it will mean for video archives of the future that might only have digital records. Will they be more or less fixed? At Spectacle this experience has made us think carefully about digital archive preservation!
Images of the catalog of Silwood Video Archive
We have a paper archive of the themes we have shot dating back 20 years.
Images of the catalog of Silwood Video Archive
We have still images of the estate dating back generations.
Scan of planning proposals Paper archive includes fliers distributed by development groups.
We are digging into the archive, we’d love you to join us! Sign up for updates, new archive releases, and to have a say in editing new material.
The Silwood Archive project is supported by The Audience Agency’s Digitally Democratising Archives project thanks to funding from DCMS and the National Lottery, as part of The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s, Digital Skills for Heritage initiative.
Except where noted and excluding company and organisation logos this work is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) Licence Please attribute as: “Silwood Archive Project (2022) by Spectacle Media CIC supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, licensed under CC BY 40
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