If you just start with saying who you are, what you’re doing, what you’re studying?
So my name is Alec Boyd, I grew up in the Peak District and I’m currently at University in Newcastle at Newcastle University studying Film Practices which is a relatively new degree up there, we’re only the second year doing it.
The course is focused on specifically the practice and the creative practise of making films for research so it’s mostly based around making documentaries which is my real passion and that’s what I want to go onto do really. I think it’s a really, really interesting course because there isn’t another one sort of like it in the country, there’s a lot of tailoring film courses that go one or two ways – they either sort of go into a film studies kind of course which is more theoretical or they’re getting you ready to go and work at Pinewood Studios or something down in London to work on feature films or to go into TV or something like that. Neither of those things particularly interested me I prefer sort of short-form kind of things so it’s the perfect course for me.
Can you talk a bit about the project that you’re working on at the moment?
So I’m currently working on my dissertation film which is the final film that I’ll be making with the culture lab at Newcastle University and that for me is a group project so we all take on different roles and I am taking on the role of creative producer and cinematographer because originally the idea for the film was my own. It was something that I’ve wanted to make for a long time so I wanted to have a degree of control over the creative process and a hand in how the film was going to look but not sort of total control as well which is why I got my good friend Tilly doing the directing and that brings a fresh pair of eyes onto the film as well.
The film is concerning where I grew up around here in the Peak District – so there’s a village just next over to the one that I live in called Edale which is one of my favourite places in the world and I was introduced to it through one of my best friends who lives up there. It didn’t take long before I went from being a tourist or a visitor in the village to becoming part of the community and feeling more at home up there than anywhere else really. I wanted to try and emulate that in a film and to show how important these dwindling rural communities are because, as I say, I grew up round here and I’ve spent most of my time now in 3 different villages. I live in a village called Hope, I went to primary school in Castleton and now I spend a lot of my time in Edale and all of these villages are struggling with the same problem of a rural decline where the house prices are going up, new families can’t afford to move so things like the village schools have gone from 40+ children from the time I was there down to the tens or in some cases or being threatened with closure. I really want to explore with this film, a link between these vibrant communities and how important it is to preserve them if they’re going to keep going again because if they dwindle and disappear it’s not like it’s going to be possible to bring them back.
The film is a documentary in an observational style. It’s based on observing the landscape and the people and how they interact with the world around them, as well as doing some more relaxed conversational types of interview and profiles which then link the personalities of the individual people into the context of the community and then into the wider context of the natural world and the village surrounding them which is quite a complex interweaving structure that is difficult to execute within 20 mins but I think it’s going to be a good film. We’re currently in the production stages of it so we’re shooting it at the moment and things are going very well.
That’s really cool. Something I’ve experienced growing up here is the difficulty of finding opportunity going into something creative. Do you feel like the geography of where you grew up maybe changed the direction of what you wanted to go into VS growing up in a city?
Oh absolutely, yeah. I was, at primary school and through secondary school, I never really knew what sort of direction I wanted to go in. I thought for a long time that I was sort of into sciences and things like that and I was going to be more academic in that sense, but then as I grew through those years I got my first camera, I was bought my first camera when I was about, I think I was about 10 years old and I simply used to use it just to video the things that I was doing and a lot of that was being outdoors and being around here. As a child there isn’t anything directional you can do with that you just have a camera and think of making films and that’s when I started getting into it.
Luckily I was very lucky that the secondary school that I went to offered a Film Studies GCSE which not many places do, I think only the welsh examination board provide it, so I did that and I was very lucky to get involved in that and that was the point where I was certain that no matter my interest in anything else I could bring those interests into film. I think film is an art form that you can bring anything to the table with and present it any way.
From there I knew that I wanted to go on and study film and make that my thing so naturally I had to leave the countryside and the rural areas and go into Sheffield, to sixth form because there was only one place offering a film studies A-Level. As far as I’m aware there was nowhere out here in the valley that was offering that. I had to push on and get into the city then and then obviously all sorts of opportunities opened up there, I was very into my music and played a lot of music and knew a lot of people in different bands so I got into making music videos for people as favours and free of charge. That was, I guess, my first taste of the film business and what it could be like even though it was an unprofessional sense but again that only breeds out of the fact that Sheffield has got a very grassroots home-grown art scene.
Whilst the type of art you get out here in the countryside is a lot of… I’m not sure how to put this, sort of ‘twee Countryfile-eskque’ kind of stuff which is fair enough and nice but it’s more hobbyist kind of art. Whereas in Sheffield I think because it’s in the North and it’s a little bit off the beaten track for certain things like Sheffield has got a very vibrant music scene but I think that only comes from the fact that a lot of the time touring bands don’t go to Sheffield and I think that’s why it’s got a good home grown scene for that – equally out of that grows good photography and good filmmakers and artists because it is sort of like its own insular community. Obviously its changed a lot even in the past 5 years since I was at sixth form there but its only getting better, there’s been a lot of new development into Sheffield now, there’s art houses and collectives springing up everywhere.
I think there’s a big push to get things out of the South and out of London and up, because there’s so much opportunity to do stuff up here and where there’s a lack of funding it allows for this home-grown push which I think is really, really nice. We’re never gonna have a big studio up here like Pinewood or something like that but I think that it’s just as important that we have these small independent art forms growing up here especially in film because there’s so much to offer up here and there are vibrant communities and a lot of stories to tell.
Something that I don’t feel like is talked about where I go to uni, because I go to University in Brighton so it’s very close proximity to London, in terms of getting internships, placements or even getting ready to find jobs for when you graduate, how’s your institution advised on this. I mean you go to university in Newcastle, in terms of getting jobs and experiences how have they advised on this?
Our institution is kind of interesting because as it’s this documentary based thing they’ve been very transparent all the way through that that’s not where the money is. It’s very much a passion and it’s a discipline, it’s not a business strategy. As much as I would love to I can’t for instance finish making this documentary about Edale send it to some festivals, ride off the back off that and make another one then another one, unless there was some sort of lightning striking twice dumb luck that I can get through. So they do sort of prepare us for that and we’ve had two modules in my time there that have been based on working in the industry and they really, really do prepare us for every sort of eventuality, like whether we’re going to have to go into a freelance kind of thing, whether were going to have to set up our own independent production houses or working as kind of a collective or cooperative.
I think that that’s actually bred primarily because we are in Newcastle we are in the North. The biggest and most famous production house to come out of Newcastle is a group called the Amber collective which was set up in the late 60s/70s and they were a single collection of filmmakers and photographers that got together and started making films about Newcastle and the local people. They’re a wonderful group and have paid out of their own pocket and had equal shares, then they bought this really nice old building down near the Tyne river and that still stands there today where it’s called the Side Cinema and the Side Gallery which is a photographic gallery.
For me this is like the epitome of the collective ethos that we have up there and there’s a lot of people trying to emulate that kind of thing including myself because realistically speaking that’s the model that is the only real way to get into it if you’re starting like this. But as I say unless you’ve got all these contacts, with so many of the art scenes it’s about who you know and even more in film because it just costs so much to not only to make a film but to release a film and tour it. You need to have either contacts or the money yourself which is sad but true, so the only real way that I could ever see managing to accomplish the dreams I’ve got of being this documentary film photographer is through cooperative structure or a collective structure and that’s the sort of thing that our institution has prepared us for.
We work alone on some projects but a lot of the time we work in groups so we’re prepared that documentary film makers don’t work in crews as such, but its near impossible to work alone. You can be a director, producer and shoot all your stuff on your own but you’re gonna need somebody else at some point because you haven’t got a whole crew backing you or lots of finances backing you. You’re spending your money to live and to make your film and whilst its relatively depressing to sit and listen to in lectures its prepared us for trying to get into industry and I think that’s actually fantastic like we make a lot of jokes about how sad and despairing it can be but realistically that is the reality and I think that’s great.
I think challenge breeds accomplishment – I think the things that are going to set us apart as film makers in the North is the struggle and the challenges that we face from doing that. Whilst maybe it nice to have a really kushty life and be able to do whatever I want I think realistically speaking we’ll probably make better films out of it.
Leading on from that you’re currently preparing something that you set up a few years ago called The Northern Project, just explain that a little bit and what your hopes are and what it is you’re trying to achieve?
So, I’m trying to think when it was now, it was 5 years ago in 2015 myself and two of my really close friends that I went to secondary school with who were both from these rural areas round here, set up what was a normal, boring, teenage YouTube channel called The Northern Project with the hope of making films to release for people to see and that came out in many different forms. We made short fictional things, we made little music videos for people, I did a project called the Monthly Edit where I just filmed everything I did and released that and that was a more of a study thing for me where I wanted to push myself to make films all the time and I really did think it helped my filmmaking skills.
Then we started to do things for people as we got more interested and maybe a few of us did the odd film or creative art jobs somewhere, we’d be like okay let’s see what we can offer, let’s take £50 off that band to do a music video – which doesn’t even cover expenses to start with but still it seems more professional. We started to push on with that so we branched out slightly and releasing photography on Instagram and covering other platforms and we had a nice, neat little 100 friends and family following. It felt big at the time but then we stepped back and thought hang on what we have here is a following, as small as it may be and what could become a brand and something in our immediate circle that were known for.
So we started to think about how we could bring it further and what we wanted The Northern Project to be originally, first and foremost, was a platform or a label and brand for us to release our various art forms on. I’m a documentary film maker, Gabby who also set this up with me is a performance artist and Millie works a lot in textiles and other fine art things so we have a wide spread skills and we all dabble in photography as well. We thought actually we’ve got something to offer here with our mixed media, we can cover a lot of basis, so we decided we were going to become a collective and we started working with other artists around, we trialled getting people to make things with our branding for us to release as mutual help kind of thing where we’d release it but they’d sent the traffic to us so that we’d each be sharing following and that worked on a small scale in terms of if the currency was views that worked.
When I went to university I started to look into the industry a lot more and I met two other fantastic people on my course called Sam and Nula who are both documentary filmmakers but have interests in photography and Nula’s also really a talented painter and another fine artist as well. They joined the collective and another friend of mine up there, Roxanna who’s got a lot of experience in media and PR and selling magazines. She’s from Bucharest in Romania and she set up an art zine over there before she came here so I thought we want you on board to do our marketing and help us. Then once we formed we stalled for a long time and it was sort of like where’s this going, it felt like a vanity project, it was all based off us. It was like okay we want to release our stuff but we can get other people to get involved but it didn’t really inspire us.
It’s only in the past 3/4 months that we started to rethink our ethos and business plan and it became about our brand and a way for us to make these passion projects and release them it became pinned under two other staples and one of these is of course getting, as we are called The Northern Project, it’s about creating this artist community in the North outside of London, outside of the South. I’ve met a great many artists throughout the years now that dabble in little bits, most of them aren’t studying art subjects they just do it on the side and they just do a little bit but it’s good to keep in contact with them we thought it was time to make this bigger.
The route we are going down, we are currently working with Newcastle University start-up initiative which is a really good tool that gives us funding and advice on starting a business and we’re going down a cooperative business strategy. Basically 6 of us are going to be shareholders and investors and it’s all even so no one has a bigger share than the other and that way we can start forming this network. The way that is going to take shape is being an online virtual gallery which will have not just our films and photography but more long form articles about it as well so they become more artefacts. Also on there will be profiles so there’s gonna be the profiles of the 6 of us in the cooperative and then people that work with us and collaborate with us which are part of a wider Northern Project collective, like creative collective.
What that creates then is this sort of network where as we graduate and push into business and the realisation that we’re going to have to do commercial work as well as passion projects, people can ask us okay ‘I want this videoing, this photography and this poster designing’. We can be like okay well we can do that stuff at a price but maybe we’re not so good at doing some website stuff, why don’t you ask this person that we’ve worked with before and that profile will be on our website.
That creates this friendly collaborative artist atmosphere where people are working to help each other rather than against each other, there’s no sort of undercutting each other and working against each other to take jobs off people it will just go through us. Artists they won’t have to pay us commission to source people to them as long as they put our branding and stay tethered to us when they’re do jobs like that. Obviously they’re freelancers so they can do what they want the rest of the time but it’ll create this nice network.
That feeds into the third layer, the third thing that we thought about which to me is probably the most important part of The Northern Project is that as a force for social change where everybody gets an opportunity to not only view art and appreciate art from whatever background you’re from because it is an online gallery, everybody can access it, everyone can see it. In the future I’d love to have an actual, physical gallery space somewhere in Sheffield probably, so people can come and see things, but that’s a pipeline dream currently.
Not only that, people can have access to being artists because being an artist, unless you’re working commercially, you can’t live off being an artist especially in this underfunded climate we’re in, especially outside of London. The way I describe it a lot and the way I described it to you yesterday is the Sunday evening Countryfile artist where you have somebody who has a wife or husband who has a very well paid job. This person doesn’t have to work so they can afford to set up a pottery studio at the end of their garden and not worry about not having any money and they can throw all their time at it and that’s all very well and lucky them but not everybody can do that. People have to work full time jobs so if we can step in and help network these people to commercial jobs, we’d be like, okay this person wants this do you have time to do this? Or like, we’re doing this exhibition do you want to show some stuff here does that fit in with your timetable? If we can help that I think it makes it more accessible specifically for people in the North of England to become artists and down the line it’d be really great to have a gallery space.
My vision is a space using community art funding to have this art based community centre which has a gallery space, it has a couple of studio spaces at the back, one for us so that we can continue to make our films and our photography and our passion projects, one that we can rent out, either subsidising so we can pay off bills or that can be used in conjunction with the event and gallery space to do outreach things, to host our events, accessible free art events, so people can come and see documentary films that they want to see or come and view art that they wouldn’t see otherwise. Better still can come and be taught about those things or come and have a go at practicing it.
I’d love to work with especially children, I’d like to have a way that they can come and appreciate art or have a chance to get hands on and have a go at it because you need to know where you’re going from an early stage if you want to get onto these things and you’re never gonna know if you can’t try. I was lucky enough to be bought a camera as I said when I was about 10 years old, it was only a tiny little thing, but it was a camera all the same and I made my first films on that. But not everyone can afford that and there’s no way you’d ever know that you’ve got a talent for making films or you’d like making films at all unless you have a go at it so I’d love to at some point in the future, I’m talking 5 – 10 years to have this space where school groups can come and have a go at making things and you can teach and try and show and try and bring art into the wider community in the North for all social demographics.
I think it’s really exciting and important. You’ve experienced growing up here, lots of people go to university and stay there rather than coming back and contributing to their communities, so to have this as a hub for, as you say, young people, kids and older people – it’s bringing that community back together and allowing people to be like ‘oh there’s an opportunity for me to live here and be a freelancer or on the side be able to make a little fortune off something that you create. I think that is really cool and really important and I don’t think many people have caught on to that yet.
I think the intergenerational gap is actually a really important and nice thing and bringing things back here. I couldn’t have pursued this had I stayed here, I had to go to the cities but that’s to be expected of these things, I mean that’s what universities are for as a start. To be able to say that I’m hoping this dissertation film is the best film that I’ve ever made and I’m hoping that’s going to be my film so my plan is to bring it back here when it’s done, I want to show it here, I want to show what I’ve been doing here, come back and show everybody that where they live now but with this outside influence and try and bring this generation together. It’s all very well having these local artists that sell their bespoke pottery and things but I think when it’s something like a documentary that will reflect on their surrounding and their lives and they’ll recognise themselves, I think that’s a really good community project I hope.
Yeah it’s nice that as well that the people who’ve seen us all grow up, normally we just disappear and then they never see us again, it’s nice to be able to bring that back and show that we’ve been doing something exciting. And that makes sense to them cause they’ve seen us grow up and they all know that we’re talented and creative.
Yeah especially if you can bring it right back to here and show there are opportunities round here. You know how there was only 6/7 of us in our year group at Castleton Primary School, none of them are probably going to settle back here now, there aren’t the jobs. We have friends that are doing zoology, friends that are in Australia, all sorts of things. Realistically, none of them are going to be able to come back and do their passions around here, so having the chance to bring that back and show that we’re still here and we still care and it’s not the sense of the young have grown up and left because that’s what it feels like round here a lot of the time, there’s no kids playing out on the avenue like there used to be.
It’s kind of fallen into the stereotype of the ‘No Hope Valley’.
Yeah absolutely. It’s interesting actually, I heard a quote last night I can’t remember who said it but it was like people go to Hope to live and then they come to Castleton to die and it’s like I can kind of see that right now. They have got more ‘social-ish housing’ down there or affordable start homes in Hope which I just think is largely lacking round here. I’d love to see some more families around here but it’s just going to take such a push from the community here.
Yeah, it’s a massive tourist destination and everyone wants a cut off the profits to be made and so everyone’s got a holiday home or turned their house into a café.
Yeah I think since lead was the main export of Castleton, since then it’s been tourism and that’s why. This is what my documentary is about – the changing landscape around these villages and the differences.
Moving on from that and going back a little bit – it is a bit of a dead end place to live sometimes, but as a filmmaker or creative person, do you see there some advantages of growing up in a less saturated place like a city? You’ve grown up in the North there is a social difference, the Northern Charm and all that, do you think you got that sort of..
Have I got Northern Charm? (Laughs) I think so. I think especially for me growing up around here, I’ve seen the breadth of Northern society now. When I started here 40 people in the school, I knew everybody by name, everybody went to everybody’s disco birthday party in the village hall and then we went to Hope Valley [college] which is slightly bigger, it’s all the villages together and that feels like a great, big American inner city high school compared to Castleton and you meet people from other walks of life, I think there was even a couple of non-white people at Hope Valley, only a couple though.
Then after that, some people stick around and stay but I went to Sheffield, I went to High Storrs which is a colossal school and that does feel like an American high school, no one wears school uniform there and there’s big wide corridors and lockers. Then I met completely different people again, I met people who never came out to the countryside, I met people who live in social housing and I met other people there who were just like me. I think that level of moving up and seeing that has given a good view on the world because as much as I love this place and as much as I love the people here and as much as I eventually want to come back and live here and have a family here, you gotta get out. You can’t stay, the second I could drive and get to Sheffield or get to Manchester or even just get between the villages I was a lot happier to be here.
Now living up in Newcastle most of the year its lovely to come back and appreciate the scenery and how lovely it is. I spent a gap year still around here with opportunity to go in and out of Sheffield but it wasn’t until I started to come back from uni that I was like ‘oh actually’, I can just go for a walk I can go up to these places where my parents used to drag me as a little kid, “no I don’t want to go up Losehill again!”
But now it’s like I want to bring people here and show them this beautiful place that we live in and show them the weird pagan traditions that we have. I brought a couple of my friends from my course down for the Garland Ceremony last year and they were running round wearing all their oak in the pouring rain, completely bewildered by what was happening and sinking pints in the pub, they just thought it was insane. It’s one of those things where people in Newcastle were like ‘oh yeah, heard you guys went down to that weird festival, but that’s just part of growing up here you know.
It’s a very lovely childhood growing up here full of weird things and you do meet other people and you say things and they’re like ‘that’s not normal’. I mean remember in that ‘Good Work Assembly’ in primary school where one of the kids brought in his lamb.
Yeah and then at lambing time we would go down to his farm and watched them lamb..
Yeah or our other friend whose parents owned a chocolate factory in a national trust property and we went on a school trip there…
Yeah and if you went to play there you left with a bag of chocolate as well.
And then you meet people at uni and you bring them up here and they’re like this is mad, I remember someone who came said it was like travelling back in time. Growing up here and then going into what you’re going into, maybe do you feel like you’ve had more freedom and less pressure because you’ve not got that many similar people around you?
Yeah I think so, definitely. I think a good way of looking at that probably thinking back to things like primary school Christmas concerts where I was the music kid because I played like 3 instruments and that meant that the Christmas concerts were like the ‘me’ show and I’d stand up and play something on the hand bells then sit down then I’d come up and play the pennywhistle then sit down then I’d come back and play the trumpet. It was like ‘he’s the music kid round here’ then I soon as I got to Hope Valley there was more and Sheffield, I mean I was nothing out there and I think that’s the same sort of thing with photography and film as well and now I’m known as that guy.
That is nice and it does give good opportunity, people quite often are just asking for a few photos to be done at an event I am hosting or come and do a bit of filming at this. I think in terms of helping people out absolutely it just means that you’re the one they know that does that but in terms of professional dilution of people round here I don’t think it makes much difference because people aren’t asking for professionals sort of stuff here. I’m only shooting a ‘professional’ student filmed documentary here because it’s something I want to do, no one’s asking me for it. The only professional work that I really get now still is in a studio in Sheffield that some of us work which is a freelance photography and film studio. I do the odd day there just cause my friend owns it or I do £10 worth of headshots a week in Newcastle. I don’t think it makes enough difference being the only guy that does it.
I think round here now it’s a case of turning all these talents, cause there’re loads of people round here that have talent and streamlining that into being a career choice or being more professional because you’re right there’s no demand for it. The only thing that people ask you to do is little odd jobs, do you mind giving a hand here and there. Everyone does favours for each other and you’re not classed as a professional if you can play the guitar. It’s just the community that we live in and it is nice.
It’s a community built on favours especially when everybody’s known each other forever and everyone knows every aspect of everybody’s life it is a case of yeah we’ll get this person to come and play the guitar, yes we’ll get this person to take some pictures. It is a lovely community to be in and absolutely I will retire into the role of the man in the village with a good camera that’s fine but at the moment I can’t be that.
Just to round up the final question and I know you’ve probably answered it in small bits but my project is all about the ultimate question, do you feel like you need to be in London to be a successful visual creative or creative person or do you think that there’s hope to be able to move everything up north?
Well I think that move is the important word. I think that for what I want to achieve no, because I think as I’ve sort of said it’s the difficulty that we have up here is the gap in the market that I am trying to solve and the hole that I’m trying to fill. If I was trying to get an internship somewhere, I’ve got no real interest in working in TV so I wouldn’t find anything much in Manchester so if I wanted to go and intern in a production house or something like that I would have to go South and I think at some point I probably will for a bit, to do these odd jobs. I wouldn’t live down there because I believe that this is where my talents can be best used and what for what I want to achieve I have to be up here. If I want to get the experience that I want to get I’m going to have to do some interning down South and make somewhat of a name for myself if, and that’s back to this word move, if we’re ever going to get things to move up here.
So the guy I work with in the studio, he used to have a studio in London and he’s just moved up here, he lives in Edale now and his studio is in Sheffield. He’s busy, but it’s a mark difference to the amount of actual stuff that he’s doing in the studio up here compared to what he was doing down there. Down there it was like he was working in the studio and that’s that, up here it’s like every so often we shoot something in the studio most of the time it’s in his office and he’s going down to London to do this job.
I think that’s really sad because, obviously it’s a lot easier for these companies down in London that might need these things down there but there’s so many professionals up here, so many great people who are just lacking in the opportunity to do that. Luckily this guy, has held onto customers that are now willing to travel up from London to shoot in the studio that he has up here but not many because they’ll just find somebody else in London. I think it’s going to take a big network of people, a lot of professionals and freelancers to pull these jobs up here and I think it’ll happen. I think it’s going to have to happen because London is a bubble and I do think that people get better chances in the creative arts than before, I’ve got no data to back that up but as far as I know, people can try their hands at things its definitely more accessible. It’s going to need to come up here otherwise we’re going to end up with an even bigger creative bubble down south and nothing left up here.
People have got this argument in their head that the north is…
A barren wasteland? Yeah (laughs) In my head Sheffield’s about 3 hours away from everything.
London is just becoming far too expensive for newcomers and people starting out in their careers…
And surely over saturated by now. It’s one thing having all the creatives down there working on different things but surely there’s a whole load of creatives not getting the jobs.
As you said there’s not a huge amount of money in it some people don’t go into this wanting to earn loads of money so why would you go to London, if you’re paying over a grand for a box room a month? It doesn’t make sense. Up here I think there’s huge potential.
Maybe not in the villages with the house prices. Sheffield is a really good point of reference actually for this art as a force for social change, like you mentioned how your dad grew up in Hyde Park flats and Park Hill, loads of those have been turned into either new social housing or there’s a lot of art spaces there now. All the bottom layers are these beautiful redone spaces for artists and small businesses to open themselves up in and I think that’s absolutely fantastic. It’s heritage, it’s got history, they’re all relatively affordable and its giving opportunity. I’m really excited to be trying to do what I’m trying to do now at this time because I think were on the cusp of something and it’s going to be the push that the North needs to bring things up here. I’m hopeful, I’m really, really hopeful for it, maybe too hopeful.