Gloucester NSW, April 2009
CHALLENGE: Arts Upper Hunter invited the Hero Project to run a workshop titled ‘Portraits of Place’, to work with locals to create a film about Gloucester. 20 participants from all walks of life decided very quickly they wanted to explore the potential impact of coal mining on their community and environment.
PARTNERS: Australia Council for the Arts Creative Community Partnership Initiative; Arts SA Partnerships for Healthy Communities; Arts NSW; Arts Upper Hunter Inc; Gloucester City Council Youth Centre; Tallstoreez Productionz; Apple Australia
Film: What’s yours, is Mine..d
Click on the image above or the link to watch - Whats Yours Is Mine…d.
If your device can’t play the clip, click here to watch it on Vimeo.
Join Eric Ingot as he shows Gloucester their future. With reassuring confidence and panache he identifies the multitude of benefits to enjoy from an open cut mine. “ At Envira-Coal, we dig the future! “
OUTCOMES: The Gloucester team met for the first time at the Council’s youth centre. Within an hour, they had identified their story – the looming open pit coal mine, that is threatening to destroy their beautiful environment. Their biggest challenge: how to make a community film that depicts a possible threat, raises awareness and educates without scaring your audience? They created a satirical pro-mining advertisement, applying spin doctor messages to sell-up potential problems as benefits! The diverse team, aged 14-65, learnt how to script and pace a comedic narrative, storyboard and film on multiple locations. 8 laptops formed a mobile edit unit, with every team producing a different chapter of the story, plus music, titles and GFX.
SCREENINGS & AWARDS:
AWARD WINNER at the International Foster Short Film competition 2009 – congratulations! Forster International Film Festival
IMPACT & FEEDBACK: Their 5min film attracted over 600 hits and many comments on YouTube within the first week of upload by one of the youth team members.
Arts Upper Hunter Inc. is now working with the community to set up their own media centre in Gloucester.
Bridget Nicholson, Regional Arts Development Officer, Arts Upper Hunter
I didn’t get back to you earlier as we hadn’t had the screening with the groups to get their feedback. We have now with both and so I would like to say that both groups are very happy and think the end result is true to the intentions of the workshop. [...]
Thanks for all your hard work, everyone here extends their praise and I think we had a very successful project, Sarah from Dungog is now going to apply to a course in Canberra and has just done a week set design something at NIDA so there are repercussions which are just what we hoped for.
Tags: environment, mining, regional, satire, social justice, youth