The Friends of Lydiard Park have made a £45,000 bid to The Arts Council South West for a digital Memories Project to celebrate the forthcoming 80 year anniversary of Lydiard Park being in public ownership.
We are working with locally led arts organisation, Create Studios which has a 35 year track record of developing young media talent and delivering high quality and imaginative film productions involving the general public. Together we aim to capture the largely unrecorded voices of different generations and diverse communities who have connected with the site since its acquisition by Swindon Corporation in 1943.
Chair of the Friends of Lydiard Park, Sarah Finch-Crisp, said:
“Swindon Council’s purchase of Lydiard House & Park during World War II was an astonishingly brave and farsighted move and their subsequent restoration of the property received national attention. The vision to provide local people recovering from the trauma of the war with a place of history, leisure, beauty and education has been fulfilled ever since. We wish to demonstrate the importance of Lydiard House and Park in the life of the town and encourage new audiences to experience and enjoy what it has to offer.”
Director of Create Studios, Shahina Johnson MBE, said:
“The team at Create Studios are delighted to bring experience from several Swindon Social History projects to the Lydiard Memories plans. Our strapline is “Capturing the Heart of every Story” working across our award-wining Outreach and Professional production programmes which are supported by Arts Council England and Swindon Borough Council. Lydiard Memories will allow us to do just that by filming personal interviews with local people and bringing those alongside regional film archive material. The planned touring exhibition will connect different generations and bring Lydiard Memories to life.”
Bids to the Arts Council are always very competitive and the outcome of the Friend’s submission will be revealed in September this year.