Lightbear Lane: ‘Proud to Be’
Theme: People + Place-shaping

Lightbear Lane are a small, Exeter-based non-profit organisation who shine a light on the importance of the arts, culture, performance and music in community, nature and heritage spaces. Through facilitation, consultancy and artistic practice,  joint directors Dr Judith Morgane and Sarah Spencer utilise and re-purpose different spaces to support wellbeing in communities and help them take creative ownership of their spaces.

Lightbear Lane’s ‘Proud to Be’ will shine a light on Mincinglake and Whipton, celebrating the ward’s thriving community and highlighting the stories of its residents. The project will begin with a community mapping exercise asking, ‘what does pride of place look like for you’, and offer workshops and engagement activities, as well as skills-development sessions, all building to the co-creation of a film involving local residents at every stage of production.

The backdrop to this project is the rich tapestry of Exeter's diverse communities. While some areas flourish with a strong sense of identity and support networks, others grapple with a lack of community cohesion. Lightbear Lane aims to bridge this gap by making heritage and arts more accessible, ultimately contributing to place-shaping and instilling a sense of pride within communities.

Sarah Spencer, whose background is in art, art history and community engagement, has spent the last year immersed in the Mincinglake and Whipton ward as a Community Builder, and discovered a vibrant community with untold stories. However, negative perceptions (from outside and within) about the ward threaten to overshadow the strong sense of community among the residents. ‘Proud to Be’ emerges as a response to this challenge, employing an Asset-Based Community Development model to harness and amplify the strengths of the community. The co-created film will weave together narratives of inspiration, recollections, and hopes for the future, showcasing the ‘change-makers’ and neighbourhood heroes that make up the community.

Key to Lightbear Lane being awarded this commission is the project team’s existing relationships in the area, and their articulation in the application about the importance of meaningful community involvement. Residents of different ages and backgrounds are invited to actively participate in creating the film – from storyboarding to post-production. The initiative not only aims to capture the essence of the community but also provides skills-training opportunities, ensuring an inclusive and empowering experience for all involved.

As the project unfolds, Lightbear Lane envisions showcasing the film at the Beacon Heath Community Centre, fostering a sense of unity and celebration within the community. Discussions are also underway with other locations and venues for a potential inner-city screening, maximizing the project's reach and impact.

Collaborations with community partners, such as Beacon Heath Squilometre group and Wellbeing Exeter, amplify the project's reach and ensure representation from diverse perspectives. Practitioners from across the arts will be involved in the skills-development aspect of the project, providing opportunities for local creatives and building sector connections (another key aspect of the Commission criteria). And the involvement of University of Exeter academic input (a key aspect of Creative Arc’s ambitions), as well as Judith’s Honorary Research Fellowship looking at engaged learning and knowledge exchange, will contribute to the ongoing evaluation and legacy of the project. The goal is to create a framework of best practice and how-to guides for other communities to replicate.

As one of the first commissions for Creative Arc, ‘Proud to Be’ speaks to the ambitions and values of the programme, which are to facilitate community-led initiatives in shaping place, building skills and participation opportunities, and contributing to ‘pride in place’. By leveraging the creative arts, this project seeks not only to celebrate the unique identity of Mincinglake and Whipton but also to provide a blueprint for other communities aspiring to achieve place-shaping through creative means. Lightbear Lane's commitment to inclusivity, diversity, and collaboration ensures that ‘Proud to Be’ will leave a lasting impact on the community, transcending the boundaries of a mere film project.

Judith and Sarah have brought to life Exeter’s oldest building, St Nicholas Priory, by using this incredible heritage space as the community asset it is, hosting local artists, curating relevant exhibitions, living history events, theatre and music, as well as creative workshops in partnership with other local heritage organisations.

PROJECT UPDATE: May 2024

Over the last year, Dr Sarah Spencer, the organisation’s Creative and Community Lead, has had the privilege of working in the Exeter ward of Mincinglake and Whipton to listen to the residents and understand the community’s needs, what inspires them and how they would like things to develop. She has been struck by the strength of the community there, the stories of people and place, and also the occasionally negative perceptions of people both inside and outside the ward that detract from these positives. ‘Proud to Be’ was conceived to tackle this challenge and to help shift these perceptions.

Drawing on an Asset-Based Community Development model, which focusses and builds upon the strengths of a community and is an essential building block to creating pride of place, we planned a co-created film produced with local artists and organisations that highlights the many and varied ways in which Mincinglake and Whipton are thriving neighbourhoods. The aim was to work with a group of neighbours of different ages and backgrounds to highlight their voices and to create a positive and powerful story of this ward. We set out to interview inspiring gamechangers, hear from residents who have overcome challenges and brought about positive change, and showcase valued community and nature locations for physical and mental wellbeing.

Alongside Sarah, the lead team comprised Dr Judith Morgane as project manager and evaluation lead; we worked closely with our filmmaker Ben Tallamy, and sound engineer Nick Hall from Music in Devon. The project was supported by independent evaluation consultant Mel Humphrey. Important collaboration for the project also came from Charlie Coldfield as workshop facilitator, the local poet Sumea, The Dilly Boys for music and community song, and Jim Causley, who presented our new song at the film launch event.

Community input was fundamental to the success of the project. We devised a variety of ways for participants to express what they value about where they live and to contribute to shaping the project. During Sarah’s engagement sessions, people drew what makes them proud of where they live on postcards; others shared photographs; some marked important places and things on a community map or wrote comments on post-it notes, and others simply preferred to chat to her over a cup of tea. Sarah tailored her creative engagement activities to make sure there were no social or language barriers, met people in their preferred surroundings, and  made sure there were visual, oral and written options to contribute to the project. The contributions were rich in breadth and depth, and the stories shared were touching and powerful; very much worth telling on the ‘big screen”. This directly shaped the people and places featured in the film and on the community map.

We have over 80 postcards, 83 post-it notes, 52 community mapping participants, 9 skill session participants, 15 students in the school workshop, and over 342 engagements with people in total.

 The Highlight of our project

The project culminated in a hugely successful film launch event attended by 57 people at the Beacon Community Centre. We provided nibbles and drinks to create a celebratory atmosphere and set up our display to share the richness of the community’s contributions, which included the new community map, project book and photos collected. We also celebrated the winners of the postcard competition: everyone attended and brought their families, and they appreciated our postbox postcard display of everyone’s entries. Exeter City Council and Exeter UNESCO City of Literature provided prizes for the winners. Jim Causley joined us to perform the new community song and got everyone to join in with the chorus - the performance added to everyone’s enjoyment and particularly the younger people in the audience commented on how much they enjoyed the music.

The turnout exceeded expectations, as did the mix of people: families and children, neighbours, participants, stakeholders, community builders, schoolteachers and academics all joined us to enjoy the event and to chat and form connections. We even had members of the community help us tidy everything away afterwards – a real statement of feeling that this project is their project. As a participant commented, “there was a lot of love in the room.”

The feedback activities devised by Mel, our evaluator, had a great uptake and gave us valuable insight into what people appreciated about the film, and what it has inspired them to do. It clearly shows that people made new connections, are more aware of their communities and local offerings (“it helped join the dots”), want to “get more involved in the community”, want to make a difference, use their newly gained skills to make their own projects (films) and inspire others, and, importantly, that the film made them feel proud of where they live.

With 342 people engaged to date, we have managed to reach many more than we had hoped to. The buy-in to the project was much higher than for most other things happening in the community: one of the community builders was impressed, commenting that “you’ve done amazingly well to bring so many people together.” Kate Galliford, manager at the Beacon Community Centre, also said, “The film was delicately put together; it was thought-provoking and demonstrated in many ways the impact a strong community has on wellbeing and individual lives – I think the fact it highlighted this was crucial... It highlighted positive aspects to an area [of the city] which has often felt overlooked and not invested in. It brought community and passion together, creating something inspiring.”

In an incredibly short time, we managed to produce a community-led film about pride of place, which inspires people to support their communities more and celebrate the place they live in. A creative and expressive community map visualises people’s perceptions about their neighbourhood, and our new community song will continue to inspire people and bring them together.