During the darkest of days (2020), Memory Dance was gifted the opportunity to build something on hyper-local Freeview Television.
With the kind support of LIVE CINEMA UK, I was awarded a chance to become an Associate Artist on a year long programme. The intention was to deliver screen heritage in live, and in-person, immersive contexts. But then Covid happened. After a few months of lockdown and computer screen fatigue I decided to take my project to the television.
Memory Dance took material from its archive and developed a partnership with local community television station Sheffield Live to launch a specialist platform for screen heritage . The station serves the South Yorkshire community via various avenues including Freeview television.
We were given access to screen work at various slots across the schedule, including a LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY programme dedicated to regional archive, and a post-midnight session called AFTER HOURS to explore long-form content, electronic music, and performance-based broadcast.
The station serves the South Yorkshire community via various avenues including Freeview television (where it has c.40k visitors passing through daily), and the Live TV website stream.
During 2020-21 we programmed 10 episodes of the LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY, and 11 mammoth all nighter shows of the AFTER HOURS, including a masssive 6 hour special launched during No Bounds 2020.
After the project finished we were asked to present a video piece reflecting on the experience screen at a conference, Immersive Storytelling Symposium, Nottingham. It is below. And gives a flavour of what went down over those 18 months.