Visiting Lowedges Group

Today we went to Michael Church in Lowedges to speak to the members of the Lowedges Friendship Group about being involved in our film. We only had about 30-45 minutes to speak to the members of the group before their scheduled session started, so we didn't get chance to speak to everyone about it. It was also unfortunate that none of the members had remembered to bring in a photograph to show us (due to difficulty getting in contact with them in between sessions), but despite this we spoke to a number of people who showed interest in the film and sharing their memories with us.

Last night Jamie informed us that the Over 50s Art Group that we were scheduled to meet next Monday had pulled out due to issues over filming, so we wanted to make sure that at this stage we attained a general interest and conversation with the group members before talking about our project plans to film and interview them. Naturally, as this came up in conversation some of the members shied away from the idea but thankfully there were a few who were fine with it.

At first most of the people we spoke to found it difficult to think of memories to talk about from their photos but as we talked more they started to remember more and more and tell us about different stories they had. We talked about our ideas for filming in places around Sheffield that have changed over the years which people might have memories of, and this led to us having the idea of maybe finding archive photos of the locations to show to them and prompt further memories and stories to share with us.

There seemed to be some misunderstanding at first about our project idea that it was just about memories and the history of Sheffield so we tried our best to keep focused on the photograph, asking first if the person lived locally and would have some photos to share with us, and then asking if they were okay with us filming them at home talking about them. From this we managed to get the contact details of 3-5 people who were interested, predominantly men, and who could contribute to the film.

At this point we can't know what stories they will tell us or if they'll be suitable to interview, but in talks afterwards we decided we would return next week to talk to the other members we missed and to see if those we did speak to can bring in their photos to show us. We will contact them before next week's session to remind them and hopefully after the rest of our meetings we will have enough contacts to start filming in their homes the week after.

After the session I also received a call from the Hollinsend Senior Citizen's group to say that because their chairman is ill that they've had to cancel our meeting on Monday and won't be holding them until after Christmas. I then reached out to Tinsley Over 60s group who meet on Wednesdays to see if we could go to their group next week - and arranged to meet them at 1pm on the 19th. Whilst its unfortunate that two groups have pulled out, with the second meeting on Tuesday, the Tinsley group on Wednesday and the Hawthorne Corner Group on Thursday hopefully we'll have enough potential contributors to start filming the week after.

The difficulty will then come in finding some sort of coherent narrative among the different stories and finding extra content outside the interviews to support it, which is where the cutaways around Sheffield and our plans for sound design will become important.