About
Windrose Rural Media Trust
Windrose (then under an earlier name – Trilith) was set up in 1984. It is a registered charity (no. 1136144). Its purpose is to use the media to undertake educational, archival and creative work in rural communities. In the past it has worked throughout the country but, for many years, has concentrated on Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire.
In 40 years Windrose has never had any regular funding but has developed a long succession of projects which respond to community needs, fundraising for them one by one. Examples are described below.
One constant has been the saving of archive films of local life through collaboration with local people. This has resulted in a large archive, which has been displayed to the public in 207 shows in village halls, theatres and cinemas, through DVD releases and on our Close Encounters page you will see film links to geographical locations: click here A to view. All of Windrose’s work is based on outreach into dispersed communities and upon the close involvement of local people from a very wide range of ages and backgrounds.
PROJECTS
The total Windrose archive is much more than archive films. Over the 32 year period, a large number of media-based projects have been devised and carried out. Some have used archive films; others have produced original creative and documentary material. All have involved local communities closely and have produced their own archive of video or audio material. Examples are:
- A project in which young people from today’s farming families recorded oral history interviews with people who were growing up on farms during the Second World War.
- Video productions to assist people with mental health problems living in rural areas.
- A radio drama project, enabling local people to write, perform and record their own original radio plays, usually on local themes, with BBC broadcast outcomes.
- A similar project to enable local people to make their own radio documentaries.
- Training and support for community groups undertaking oral history recordings and community videos in their own villages.
- A series of radio ballads combining specially commissioned music and poetry from musicians and poets at an early stage in their creative careers with recordings of local people talking about their working lives.
- Projects to give established and new artists the opportunity to create new music and poetry to accompany archive films and radio documentary material on local subjects.
- A series of archive film-based productions contextualising the old films with local people’s memories and knowledge.
- Audio trails portraying journeys through local landscape, including all kinds of encounters and discoveries.
- Education pack based on archive films and oral history recordings.
- A project to train and support a community group in running it’s own radio station on a temporary broadcasting licence.
- Song and Film, a series of shows staged in theatres which combined archive films, traditional music from the area, performed live, and narration.
- The revival of films made by one of the area’s most enterprising cine clubs of 1960s through the production of a DVD also incorporating the memories of surviving film makers.
- A project using our archive films as inspiration for memories and reminiscence for people living with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
- A project to create an archive for a theatre, including training theatre staff and performers to film oral history memories of the theatre, involving young people in the creation of songs about the world of local entertainment and culminating in a performance including archive film, new oral history video, live music and narration.
SUPPORT OUR WORK
Please click on the link to find out more information on how you can support Windrose.