Dorchester is a county town in rural Dorset, surrounded by beautiful countryside and steeped in history .It is a destination for holidaymakers and those escaping the hustle and bustle of the big cities to experience the rural idyll. It also has a homeless and vulnerably housed community. Some pass through the town, including the so called Road Men, whilst others sleep rough for longer periods of time, often going unnoticed by the wider community. This is a precarious existence with its roots in marital breakdown, unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse and chronic mental health issues.
Out in the Open was conceived as a project in the summer of 2011. Dorset based musician and composer Kathie Prince was commissioned by the Solo Trust, a Dorchester charity, to create a performance piece with members of the local community. The decision was made to focus on homelessness and base the project around the Hub drop – in centre for rough sleepers in Dorchester.
Due to the transient nature of the people involved, Kathie Prince chose to work with film, recorded sound, music and visual art. Bridport film maker, Clive Whaley came on board, as did sonic artist Adrian Newton and later on in the process Peter Snelling joined the team as visual artist in residence at the Hub. Their brief was to give a voice to the voiceless, to bring the issues of homelessness out into the open.
The result is extraordinarily candid and moving accounts of life lived out in the open. In the last few years several members of the homeless and vulnerably housed community in Dorchester have died, including one of those people involved in our project.
This project is dedicated to him and all those people affected by homelessness. The situation is getting worse in the UK. It could happen to any one of us.
Thursday 31st May 7.30pm Press Launch Plaza Cinema Trinity Street, Dorchester.
Friday 1st June 10.30pm Plaza Cinema Dorchester: late night showing
Saturday 2nd June 5pm OUT IN THE OPEN (in the open) Dorchester Market Car Park
Out in the Open Visual Installation, Dorchester town centre from Monday 29th May
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BACKGROUND:
OUT IN THE OPEN: The Project
Kathie Prince and Clive Whaley spent several months getting to know the staff, volunteers and those people using the Hub. It soon became clear that the nature of the project was to go with the flow and capture on film, digital recorder and paper, impromptu songs, tunes, poems and thoughts as they happened in the Hub and on the streets of Dorchester. Clive then began the process of filming and very quickly gathered remarkable interviews with people forced to sleep rough for many different reasons around the town.
Adrian Newton and Kathie Prince worked together, collecting and sampling sounds and spoken words for the live devised and improvised music which will be played in response to the film.
They worked members of Viva! The Dorchester Community Choir, devising and recording vocals based on interviews with homeless people who appear in “Out in the Open.” And they joined forces with other musicians to create the live musical element.
Artist Peter Snelling created striking life size paper cut outs of people he met at the drop in centre based on their ideas and experiences. These were pasted on walls around Dorchester town centre during the run up to the Dorchester Festival with the aim of making the invisible visible.
The result of the project is a series of intimate portraits of homeless and vulnerably housed people who share their own unique stories with us, presented through film, music, sampled sound and a dynamic visual installation.
For more information contact:
Kathie Prince - Buzz Music Projects
Producer, Musical Director, Out in the Open
tel: 01305 259201mob. 07826385301
email: kathiebuzz@talktalk.net
Kathie Prince
Producer, Musical Director
www.kathie-prince-singer-musician.co.uk
Kathie Prince is director of BUZZ Music Projects, and a musician, singer, composer who has worked extensively throughout the UK, Ireland and abroad. She has many years experience facilitating and managing youth and community projects, working in schools as a music/voice specialist, performing and devising in mainstream and experimental music theatre and collaborating with dancers, musicians and visual artists.
Projects include directing “Sounds Unusual,” a major experimental music festival on London’s South Bank, composing and performing music for the BBC children’s TV, directing music for community plays in the Orkney Islands, cross community work in Belfast with Opera Northern Ireland, experimental theatre in Assisi, Italy and performing as an actor musician at the Lyric Theatre , Belfast and Druid theatre, Galway, Ireland.
Clive Whaley
Film Maker
www.clivewhaley.co.uk
Clive Whaley is a Bridport based filmmaker. After a 20 year career in sports management and consultancy Clive bought a video camera simply to record a family holiday and then became fascinated by the filmmaking process. He progressed from family videos to corporate DVDs for clients such as the National Lottery and Honda and eventually, television documentaries. His film about West Dorset farmer Jim Armstrong: "Dorset Days: a year in the life of Longhorn Jim" has been shown eight times on BBC FOUR. His most recent full length work is an 'operamentary' called "Lonely Boys" staged at Bridport Arts Centre in 2011. Combining documentary interviews with the '3 ages of man' on film and Clive's original songs on stage, "Lonely Boys" played to packed houses and standing ovations.
Clive has undertaken the filming and editing of "Out in the Open" and is extremely grateful to all those who feature in the film for allowing him into their world and for their openness and honesty on camera.
Peter Snelling
Visual Artist
www.mypockets.co.uk
Peter Snelling is a graduate from the National Film and Television School and now works as a fiction and documentary filmmaker and artist.
Much of his work involves working with people who have never made a film or creative work before but have something important to say. The films and art made in partnership with these people give voice to powerful experiences that would otherwise go unheard.
Peters films have been screen on BBC2, Channel 4, Virgin Media, at the BFI’s Essentially British Festival, The New York Museum of the Moving Image, The London Short Film Festival, The Edinburgh Festival and Encounters Festival and won the BBC Big Screen award for Best Documentary, Best Film at the Chicago Children’s Film Festival and Best Community Film at Cinemagic Belfast as well as 7 UK Film Council First Light awards. His Films have over 70,000 online views.
Adrian Newton
Sonic Artist
http://nemeton.org.uk
Adrian is a sound artist who has contributed to a number of festivals and other sonic arts events in Dorset and beyond, including the Sonic Arts Expo, Inside Out and Hubworld. He has also regularly contributed site-specific soundworks to performances by Wimborne Community Theatre over a number of years. Previous projects focusing on homeless people have included 'Home from home', commissioned by Poole Arts Development Unit in 2007, which was the focus of an installation in the Lighthouse, Poole.
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