Kate Valentine

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So far Kate Valentine has created 57 blog entries.

Volunteer Call Out!

VOLUNTEER CALL OUT!

Can you recall the excitement of the rides, the smell of candy floss and the music on the merry-go-round?

Digital Drama has received a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant for an exciting heritage project, All the Fun of the Fair! in Mitcham, south London.

Digital Drama is looking for people who can recall the excitement of the rides, the smell of candy floss and the music on the merry-go-round, to record their memories. Volunteers who would like to learn the skills of interviewing and audio recording will also be crucial in the creation of this multimedia project, celebrating one of London’s favourite fairgrounds. Contact Digital Drama on 07525 205148 or email info@digitaldrama.org for more information about getting involved. 

Mitcham Fair is regarded as one of the oldest in England, reputably having been granted a Royal Charter by Elizabeth I, and is held in fond memory by people of all ages. Made possible by a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant of £67,400 raised by National Lottery players,  All the Fun of the Fair! focuses on the heritage of Mitcham Fair, the people who run it and those who remember it. This multimedia heritage project will look at the role of fairgrounds in society, the variety of entertainments on offer over the years, and will bring together both the memories of Showmen and of the local fair-goers, to create an audio trail, film and animations created by local young people to be enjoyed for future generations.

Local partners supporting All the Fun of the Fair! include Merton Heritage & Local Studies Centre, Clarion Housing, The Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain, Canons House & Grounds, SHINE and The Green Arts Centre. All the Fun of the Fair! will be featured at Mitcham Heritage Day in September 2021 at Canons House & Grounds and activities will run through until November 2021.

By |2021-07-08T11:38:49+00:009 June 2021|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Kennedy Play Wins Gold!

Our audio drama ‘No Ordinary Joe, No Ordinary Kennedy’, commissioned by INK, has won Gold at the HearNOW Festival in the USA. We are delighted that the play will be available to listen to as part of the Podcast Palooza, between 24-27th June ’21, and is also available online here.

‘No Ordinary Joe, No Ordinary Kennedy’ by Martyn Wade and directed by Kate Valentine, was made possible by funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Details of cast and production are on the INK website.

By |2021-06-07T10:36:08+00:007 June 2021|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Kennedy Audio Play – Listen Now

Our production of No Ordinary Joe, No Ordinary Kennedy by Martyn Wade, commissioned by INK for this year’s Festival is now available to listen to here .

No Ordinary Joe, No Ordinary Kennedy tells the dramatic and tragic story of Joe Kennedy Jnr, the elder brother of JFK, who as a young man seemed destined to become President of the United States – until, that is, the Second World War intervened. The audio play examines Joe’s complex character, and traces events which led Joe to volunteering for a top-secret and highly dangerous mission, in which he was required to fly a Liberator plane packed with explosives and bail out before it crossed the Channel. Tragically his plane exploded over Blythburgh, Suffolk killing him and his co-pilot, Lt. Wilford John Willy (Bud). This play is to honour them both and all those who flew and lost their lives during WW2.

Click here to listen to the audio.

NO ORDINARY JOE, NO ORDINARY KENNEDY

Written by: Martyn Wade

Commissioned by INK and produced by Digital Drama

Cast:

Joe Jr: Charlie Field

Joe Sr: Andrew Wincott

Pat: Molly McGeachin

Bud: William Kempsell

Production:

Director: Kate Valentine

Sound: Lucinda Mason Brown & David Chilton

Associate Producer for Digital Drama: Alison Ramsey

Thanks to National Lottery Heritage Fund, the project will also gather and record local WW2 stories which will be then be presented and stored at The Halesworth Museum and an exhibition displaying parts of the crashed plane curated for the first time from different sources.

By |2021-04-14T10:23:34+00:0014 April 2021|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Bring Your Archives to Life

How are you engaging audiences and volunteers with your archives? Digital activity is an ideal way of keeping in touch, sharing skills and producing co-created content featuring your untold stories. If you need ideas, here are some of the solutions Digital Drama have created for clients this year. Please get in contact if you would like to discuss how we can help you bring your archives to life.

ARCHIVES & VOLUNTEERS:

BRITISH RED CROSS:

Digital Drama created the audio content for 150 Voices, an online exhibition for the British Red Cross to commemorate their 150th anniversary. This project is a great example of how to remotely yet successfully engage existing and new volunteers, run skills training and create content to connect with a broad audience. We trained 50 volunteers across the UK to choose an archive object, research its background, write a script and record a short audio description. Click to visit the online exhibition here: 150 Voices

ARCHIVES & ORAL HISTORIES:

HOME FRONT FILMS:

Working with archive film footage from London’s Screen Archives and oral history interviews with older residents of 6 project partners in  London Boroughs, Digital Drama produced 4 short films on the WW2 topics of Digging for Victory, Bombing & the Blitz, Evacuation and VE Day. Oral histories were recorded with 90 residents in the boroughs of Camden, Croydon, Ealing, Hounslow, Kingston and Merton. Read more about the project at Home Front Films

 

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES OF HALESWORTH IN WW2:

Commissioned by the INK Festival in Suffolk and in partnership with the Halesworth and District Museum, we made a short film combining oral histories and images from the archives and trained 20 volunteers via Zoom in the skills of reminiscence interviewing and recording.

ARCHIVES AND ACTORS:

THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES EXHIBITION ‘WITH LOVE’:

Having produced film and audio content for various exhibitions at The National Archives, once again Digital Drama were commissioned to record actors reading letters from the archives for ‘With Love’, exploring correspondence over 500 years featuring stories of heartbreak and passion. The recordings gave texture to the subsequent TNA podcasts and enabled a broad reach and lasting legacy for the archival material.

ARCHIVES AND AUGMENTED REALITY:

FILMMERTON; ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR:

Taking archive photography to a new immersive level, Digital Drama commissioned an AR app for FilmMerton as part of the Mitcham VR Festival. Bringing to life the vibrant photos of Mitcham’s ancient fairground in a site specific pop-up exhibition, visitors used iPads to experience the sounds and moving images of  ‘All the Fun of the Fair’.

 

By |2020-11-06T09:58:02+00:005 November 2020|Uncategorized|0 Comments
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