Sense of Place in Film: a creative partnership project in East Ayrshire
The Galloway and Southern Ayrshire Biosphere Partnership has delivered a range of Sense of Place projects in East Ayrshire, through the Coalfield Communities Landscape Partnership (CCLP). Running for the duration of the five-year CCLP scheme, Sense of Place invites local people to explore what they cherish most about where they live through discussion, creativity and outdoor experience. The programme includes Sense of Place workshops as part of the Biosphere Communities scheme and most recently our final project with CCLP, Sense of Place in Film.
For this iteration of Sense of Place the Biosphere’s Community & Education team worked with two East Ayrshire community groups: the Recovery Group which meets at the Boswell Centre in Auchinleck, and Cumnock Juniors Community Enterprise, a charitable organisation bringing people together through volunteering and sports. The project was led by group members themselves, who produced a set of films with the support of Saskia Coulson and Colin Tennant from CT Productions. The series of short films are now available to view on the GSA Biosphere Partnership’s YouTube channel.
Saskia and Colin met with each group to discover the stories they wanted to tell before, teaching members how to use professional camera and audio equipment, looking at light, composition, sound and narrative, ideation and storyboarding for film-making, shooting in the field, management of video files, editing and postproduction, including sound mixing and colour grading.
Members of both groups went out to film on location, and used the editing suite at Biosphere Proud Supporter A’ The Airts in Sanquhar to produce the final films. Individuals took on different aspects of film production, a fantastic opportunity to develop skills in areas or particular interest while contributing to the high quality final cuts for a total of seven Sense of Place shorts.
“I enjoyed seeing the young people develop in terms of their confidence in front of a camera and also their skill levels in terms of putting videos like this together and the amount of work that goes into that. It builds up confidence, knowledge and skills… It will be useful for the future uptake of young leaders in the program. The finished videos are a brilliant selling point as a promotion material. Also the skills learned can be used for future projects by those who completed the course.”
Sense of Place in Film highlights the inspiring people and projects being undertaken by community groups in Auchinleck and Cumnock, allowing group members to share stories of finding wellbeing and passion for life while encouraging even more people to get involved and discover theirs.
If you’d like to find out more about our work with CCLP, see our webpage or contact our Community & Education team via info@gsabiosphere.org.uk.
