The Hinterlands - Day 5..

I have been having a wonderful time this week with 17, and occasionally 18 others down here on the edge of the Blackdown Hills in Devon at the second ever Hinterlands workshop. We are humbled to have participants that have travelled thousands of miles to get here to this little corner of rural Devon to make up our small community for a week and learn together in this really special way.

It's been a week of sunshine and in between training with duckrabbit our new found friends here at the Hinterlands have eaten wonderfully prepared fresh food out in the open to relive the everyday stresses of life. Tuesday saw teams head out across the county to visit all it has to offer and collect peoples valuable stories to treasure and turn into wonderful photofilms. From trams, to calves and horse drawn canal barges there was something for everyone and perhaps an eye opener into what this beautiful patch of green has to offer.

In the past few days we have has the pleasure of hosting a talk with Guardian multimedia editor Pascal Wyse who wowed us with his beautiful soundscapes from nature before getting almost three hours sleep in his cosy bell tent to get up and capture the dawn chorus. On top of that we were happy to welcome back past Hinterlands student Alice Carfrae - alicecarfrae.com - to talk about her current work Tin Girls and her experimentation with multimedia. John MacPherson - john-macpherson-photography.com - finished wrapped our evening last night with tales of people, places and generally enthused us to become more excited about just taking pictures and enjoying it for what it is.

It's the last full day today and after cooking a whole host of fry-ups this morning I am looking forward to our finale this evening. We invite the local community, those that have helped and participated in our photofilms to come along and view the work made here at The Hinterlands. It's a really special part of what we do here and it's my favourite. It makes you really consider what you put into your work and to make it as honest and as true as possible, and there really is nothing like seeing that look of genuine happiness on the face of someone whose story you have told when they watch a film about themselves.

24 hours left here at the yurts and I'm sure it will be great!

A year already..back down in Devon for The Hinterlands

It's hard to believe it's been a year already since we were down in Devon putting on the first Hinterlands workshop. It won't be easy to forget the characters who made last years workshop so much fun and a real experience for everyone but I'm sure this years bunch will build on what we had and I hope it will be a great week.

Well I'm back down here in the Blackdown hills now with Rebecca and people will be arriving from all over the world (no really!) at lunchtime tomorrow.  We have been working hard making bits of kitchen, hanging signs, wiring things up, cleaning things down, having bonfires and generally getting hold of the best local booze we can find. Now I'm totally shattered and about to hit the hay.

Here's to The Hinterlands....year 2...part 1

The Forgotten 1%

The forgotton 1% from over at photographer Will Steacy's blog. Too true!

http://willsteacy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/forgotten-1.html