Telling the true story of 'Britain's worst Christmas tree'

The last of our Talk about Art, Culture and Place sessions for this year saw us in Stockton – home to ‘Britain’s worst Christmas tree’, according to the Daily Mail.

It was a slur which the town’s residents were never going to accept quietly and some of the attendees at our Saturday session about using video and audio wanted to explore the issue some more.

The video here is what they came up with, compiled from a variety of phones, cameras and whatever they had to hand. Given the hodgepodge of kit available, the final video was never going to be seamless, but what the team did successfully convey is that there’s more to Stockton at Christmas than a tree intended as a goodwill gesture.

The idea of the workshop – hosted at The Arc – was to look at the different ways video and audio can be used in storytelling. After a morning studying some technical aspects and learning from other people, three teams set about making their first films, using whatever pieces of equipment they could lay their hands on.

One of the teams tackled the issues of ageism and stereotyping, drawing on their own experiences and feelings about how society responds to people as they got older. The other team decided to use the busy arts centre venue as inspiration for presenting Stockton as an exciting place to visit.

We had a lot of fun and look forward to working with the groups again when we resume in the New Year. In the meantime, the shared resources that are being created as part of this series of work in partnership with The Culture Vulture, are all detailed below.

We’re still looking for help to map some of the great online activities going on across the Tees Valley area which stretches from Darlington to Hartlepool so if you’re one of those working in the region, please do add yourself in.

Further details on the final two events will be posted here on this blog and on social media (hashtag #noticeTees) in the New Year – we look forward to seeing some of you then.