Foleshill Screenings

Foleshill Screenings aimed to unite researchers, filmmakers and archivists, to explore the role of community co-produced film and archive television in building connections and supporting individual and social well-being.

It was a collaborative project between Dr Lopamudra Patnaik Saxena (Coventry University: Research Fellow, Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience), Kat Pearson (PhD researcher, University of Warwick: Department of Film and Television), Ellie House (Caste Away Arts/Foleshill Community Centre) and Dr Clare Watson (Media Archive of Central England).

The project recognised that community-centred cultural engagement (involving and engaging with members of a community) plays a key role in creating and sustaining connections for community resilience. Film and archival television screenings contributed to making Foleshill Community Centre a vibrant and creative space, and for building a sense of belonging locally. As Saxena’s research on Social Supermarkets has shown, community-led initiatives play a vital role in austerity Britain as spaces of hope and possibility. The project also built on Kat Pearson’s doctoral research into the role of archive television in the context of Cities of Culture projects, and her work for the Media Archive of Central England in their outreach in the city.