Beestonia: The Movie unleashed…and 2015: time to get creative.

Here’s a little treat for you. Grab some popcorn, and click the link:

http://thebeestonian.co.uk/

We’ve decided to release Beestonia: The Movie today to coincide with the launch of the official website for The Beestonian AND the launch of the magazine’s partnership project with Creative Beeston, more of which later.

 The film has been shown in public several times now, as well as leaking    on the internet (we suspect those pesky North Koreans) for a few hours a    couple of weeks ago. It opened the Beeston Film Festival, has had  mentions in the Nottingham Post, BBC Radio Nottingham, trailed on  NottsTV and tons more. I even took it to show MA Built Environment  students last week, as part of their project to design ideas for Beeston’s  regeneration, which I’ll explain in a later post. We even have a fan in the  form of BAFTA winning genius filmmaker Shane Meadows, who we even  persuaded into giving us a cameo.

It seems to go down well; it’s far from a straight documentary, more a pyschogeography: a more playful, organic way to approach an urban environment. I will write more on it soon, and tell of the great work done by my colleagues Melvyn and Christian at HiveMind, the production company we formed to make the film, as well as to thank the many people who helped make the film without a budget. Everyone volunteered their time, so thank you. And a special cheers to Jamie Clayden, who was a star throughout, and was such a professional people have asked me many times how much he cost to buy in from RADA. Nowt, me ducks. We’re both Stabbo ex-pats.

Enjoy, comment, share, suggest. And bookmark our new The Beestonian site. We intend to fill it full of wonder. (cheers to Lewis Stainer and Gail Spalding-Frost for the pics)

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Facebook users who have done the sensible thing and followed The Beestonian on our page there you might have noticed that through January we have been running a weekly feature featuring a local creative ever Thursday called, not very creatively, Creative Thursday. We plan to do this right through 2015, to celebrate the wide, diverse range of creatives in our town. Why? Cos we are stuffed with talent, talent that doesn’t limit itself to the confines of NG9 but shouts at the world to come and have a look at what they have. There are many debates to what we do as a town when industry has ebbed away, and High Street retails plateaus. I believe that a great contribution to keep us thriving and vibrant is in our creatives. 2015 is a huge year for Beeston. This is our way of celebrating that.

It doesn’t cost anything to be featured (though we may take in advertising to pay for the site overheads later on); and hopefully it will add to a huge directory of our creative fabric in Beeston.

If you are a creative, or know someone who needs shouting about, drop us a line at thebeestonian@gmail.com and we’ll get in touch with you. You’ll find our new site here: http://ouryear.creativebeeston.co.uk/.