Walsall For All

Aims of video campaign:

• To raise awareness of the Walsall For All programme among those living, working or studying in Walsall
• To inspire individuals and groups on the themes of integration and cohesion and engage, enable and empower them to be part of the integration journey.
• To showcase the positive work happening across Walsall to bring communities together.
• To celebrate Walsall as a diverse borough and as a whole.

The Walsall For All team suggested the films be poetry led and asked us to do some local research to find out what themes were important to the people and organisations involved in the initiative. We contacted almost 40 organisations and conducted 15 detailed interviews. The resulting report on our findings enabled us to agree the tone and main themes of the films.

Our next job was to find the perfect poet! Former Walsall Poet Laureate Peace had already taken part in our research and turned out to be the perfect fit. We produced a brief for each film’s poem and Peace delivered two exceptional pieces of work.

Continuing our collaborative approach, we planned to meet the Walsall For All team to begin storyboarding. On a project like this, based on place and with such a strong vision from the commissioning team, sharing knowledge and ideas is really important. We put a date in the diary. And then the nation went into lockdown!

Several months later, we picked up the conversations, but this time online! Storyboards were produced and a filming schedule, involving many of the organisations we’d spoken to in our original research, was prepared. Many venues were closed and some organisations had suspended or re-focussed their work. The ones that were open were operating within restrictions. Most were potentially about to close again under threat of a second lockdown so we moved quickly!

There were some ideas we’d thought of as key at the beginning of the project and the restrictions meant we had to rethink and work around the new situation:

• People – our vision was to have people at the centre of the films, particularly individuals interacting and crowds gathering. The pandemic put an end to that for the most part, but using hero shots throughout both films we made sure people from Walsall were front and centre.
• Locations – ensuring the health and wellbeing of our crew and contributors was a priority so we took all recommended precautions, employing masks, hand sanitisers and social distancing. With just a director, camera operator and producer on our 4 day shoot, we were able to cover 20 locations and film more than 100 people, safely.

Finally, Peace recorded the VO, music was chosen, the edit, graphics and grades were completed and our Walsall For All films were delivered, to amazing feedback. Working with the Walsall For all Team was a complete pleasure and we’re happy that we were able to establish such a good working relationship from the start and deliver what we think are some excellent films. The films will be used across all Walsall For All platforms and we’re looking forward to how the people of Walsall react!