Everyone finds themselves pensive in these strange times. We’re mindful of all of the cultural projects that have been disrupted, delayed or cancelled, and feel for our colleagues in the arts and heritage sectors. But we’re thankful too that the majority of the work was put in place before the stringent measures for Covid-19 were set. For us, looking back on this wonderful project and reflecting back on all the lovely people we’ve met and worked with – some of whom are no longer with us, I can only feel very privileged and lucky to have had the chance to get a small insight into what makes the various people from Herefordshire tick: what makes them smile, chat, reminisce, and sometimes even hold back a tear or two.
There were many, many touching and proud moments in this long project: I was so pleased that our heritage film ‘Stories From The Hop Yard’ was voted Audience Favourite at Borderlines in 2018 (beating off competition from many Oscar contenders and other local fare) and the fact that it gained the biggest ever single cinema audience at Malvern Theatre was very cool.
It’s absurd to reduce everything to simple facts and numbers, but thinking about the incredible efforts made by everyone involved in the project, and the appreciative comments from audiences, I think the figures below do say something important about the scope of the work that has been undertaken (and will carry on) for Herefordshire Life Through a Lens:
3 paid internships roles & 20 core project volunteers roles
253 one-off volunteers
112 video oral history interviews recorded and made available online
2 feature-length documentaries
34 school groups visited the county archive & made heritage films
906 pupils at school film screenings
4,738 people at 54 screenings of 2 feature-length heritage films
1500 DVDs distributed
180 DVDs, 120 postcard packs and 15 A3 workshop cards distributed free to dementia groups
6,104 Derek Evans images digitised, and scanning still continues
36,320 exhibition visitors to 17 photographic exhibitions.
Social media stats 1.6K Facebook followers with posts frequently reaching 2-4k people
lb51,000 ‘in-kind support’ and lb54,560 worth of volunteer input.
Thank you all. Stay well. Keep smiling.