THE TOWN ON THE TORRS

New Mills Community Festival received a £10,000 grant from the Local Heritage Initiative for a project designed to raise awareness of the heritage of New Mills amongst local people and visitors.

The Festival live performances and the production process will result in an interactive DVD telling the story of the town's history put together by a professional producer working with local people.

September's spectacular lantern procession in New Mills saw over two thousand people walking through the Torrs gorge, spectacularly illuminated at nightfall by fire sculptures and torchlight.

The Festival themes of fire and water and the geographical setting among the old mills by the River Goyt will feed into the design of the DVD to create a unique picture of the town's history.

A group comprising of members of the Festival Committee, members of the Local History Society and other interested individuals, is working with project manager Rosemary Richards to make the DVD.

DVD Content

The DVD will look at the town's heritage through five main sections with some additional archive information such as stills. The design of the DVD will draw on images of fire and water within the lantern procession which is part of the New Mills Community Festival and will incorporate the work of the theatre company The Babbling Vagabonds for the 2003 festival workshops, procession and fire display.

Five themed video sections of around 5 minutes will be the main features of the DVD:

1 New Mills moving into the new millennium
Using the festival images, including children in schools doing workshops to talk about the town, and the Millennium Bridge Walkway and Heritage Centre Torrs walking routes to give an idea how the town is moving into a new stage.

2 The story of town
Starting with images of the lantern procession through the Torrs we lead to explaining the history of the Torrs and the town. A factual background to the town starts with geology and ice-age origins, the river and where it leads, the last five hundred years from a small community with a corn mill, to industrial revolution and up to present.

We 'pull focus' to reveal New Mills' part in the North West textile trade, the international textile routes, how the materials came and went, and then return to how that led to development of mills and transport routes. More recent decades can include local film and video material, and it may be possible to include other archive material to illustrate mill processes etc.

3 Family Stories
Allowing the story of the town to be illustrated by a few individuals through interviews illustrated by stills - We are seeking participants in this section who have three generations of family in New Mills.

4 Industry and Transport
A visual tour of the town - this is a section which would lend itself to being presented by possibly more than one individual leading the camera to look around and explaining as they go about the railways, the bridges, the canal. Will include visuals of New Mills from the transport systems.

5 Buildings and Natural Environment
This section would also lend itself to a 'guided tour' - part personally presented and certainly with visual material and voice over. It will also draw on stills photographs, maps, models etc to illustrate how the environment has changed from prior to the mills, through the mill era, to the post mill era - and particularly the dramatic impact this has had on The Torrs.

The DVD will also include a short closing section leading into the future, asking questions about the possible future of New Mills as a gateway to leisure activities and the Peak District. There will be a stills photographs section with audio narration and a resource lists.