Words by Hayley Guest, Creative Lead
Featured image by Tod Jones
*Fade from black* The film opens on a shot of a garden. In the foreground, an intricately decorated wooden sign reads ‘Welcome to The Commons’, and behind this there are areas of lush green grass, light gravel paths, juvenile trees and curved wooden planters. In the background the triangular roofs of factories define the skyline, contrasting a bright blue summer sky. The narrator begins… ‘Spectra, a West Midlands arts organisation, welcomes you to The Commons, a new emerging community garden’. In the next shot, a white lady in a striped t-shirt is watering plants and flowers amidst a sea of green clover.
What is a Commons? A shared space, owned by everyone and no-one simultaneously, a cultural and natural resource accessible to all members of society. This is a public space where all are welcome; to plant, nurture, share, challenge, debate and rest. To begin to create a space such as this, Spectra co-designed and co-created the garden with community partners – a wide range of local citizens who have equal ownership of this land, and therefore an equal say in what it should look, feel, smell and sound like.
In our engagement work we attend carefully to how we create inclusive and accessible spaces, ensuring people can find ways into the creative work, to ensure that a full spectrum of voices are heard and represented in the finished design and ultimately, the garden. So when we came to finding ways to document this through film, we were keen to think about how we could tell the story of creating The Commons in an equally accessible way, thinking about the various ways in which our audiences may experience the film.
When we first met filmmaker Robert Alexander, he talked passionately about his approach to creating accessible film, considering how as a team we could ‘bake in access from the beginning’. It was a beautiful way to think about access – ensuring that it is present as a key ingredient at the planning stage of the creative process. When I asked Robert his perspective on this he said, ‘Rather than treating audio description as an afterthought, something added only after the film was completed, I wanted it to be considered from the very beginning, influencing choices around shot selection, framing, and my interview approach.’
Maisy, Spectra’s Marketing and Communications Lead, welcomed the opportunity to explore more accessible media content with Robert, adding, ‘When our creative practice is centred on creating new spaces rather than adapting existing ones, it was exciting when Robert introduced us to a new way of embedding accessibility into the film from the inception rather than audio description being an add on. It feels meaningful, and adds so much to the documentary for everyone who engages with it.’
Previously, we have included audio description in film and theatre work, adding in an AD option for audience members who needed or wanted this. Robert wanted to bring the audio description front and centre, opting to begin with the AD narrative and use that to plan the shots he would get later on. Robert invited Karren Visser, an audio description consultant, on board to help guide the process and bring her lived experience as a visually impaired person. Robert adds, ‘Collaborating with Karren from pre-production through to the final edit allowed us to question and reflect on how and why shots were chosen, and how questions were asked to contributors. This process was central to shaping the film.’
We had a wider meeting with Robert, Karren and members of the Spectra creative team, prior to filming, to identify the stories we wanted to highlight and celebrate. Robert was really keen to tell the story of The Commons from the participants perspective, and as a team that was really appealing to us. In the film you’ll listen to the stories of two participants and their link with the garden. This grounds the process of creating The Commons in the experiences of the community, how they felt they were integral to the process, and the success of the garden. Robert adds, ‘In the final film the audio description delivered by the narrator is minimal. This was a conscious decision as we wanted the descriptive elements to come primarily through the voices of the contributors themselves.’
As with any creative project, there were challenges along the way; weather (standard!), participant absences, and substantial changes to schedules, but with Robert’s thoughtful approach we have a beautiful, accessible documentary film to share about our work at The Commons. And as Kate (Creative Director) states at the end of the film…
“We look forward to the garden blooming and evolving, as the local residents, and the local wildlife, begin to take ownership of the space.”
The Story of the Commons: A Short Documentary Film is out now.
We are grateful for funding from Severn Trent Community Fund and our partners Your City and Metropolitan Hospitals Charity, core funding from Arts Council England, and support from Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust. The workshops involved in the co-design process, Wild Possibilities, were also funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.
