Tinseltown? Accrington film-maker is happy at home

12:45pm Wednesday 1st September 2010

By Anna Mansell

A ONE-minute film about her ‘friendship’ with Accrington led to Caroline Eccles forging a career in her dream job, without leaving the home town she loves so much.

Until then, film-making had been a hobby but now she’s quizzing fellow residents about their favourite places in the town – from chippies to the best place for a cup of tea.

Huckleberry Films was set up last year by 31-year-old former library assistant Caroline and her partner Dave Pownall on the back of winning a competition organised by environmental charity Friends Of The Earth, which asked people to make a 60-second film about the place on earth they were friends with.

“The competition was a massive break and it went from there. Now we’ve worked with Friends Of The Earth and Age Concern,” Caroline said.

“I met Dave at university and we started pursuing it, making films for friends, then we got asked to do things like weddings. We started out taking a second hand video camera with us for days out – just holiday videos really.

“Now we do documentaries, we’ve done a music video for Bernard Wrigley and last week we did some teaching with teenagers from Liverpool on a residential near Burnley.

“It was a massive jump, from working in a library stamping books to setting up Huckleberry Films. But I hate to think ‘what if?’ It’s easy to stick with what you know rather than trying to do something — and be willing to fail, that’s something I talk about a lot. You have to think about babies learning to walk — they fall over, but they’re not afraid to get up and try again.”

The Friends Of The Earth prize — funding for another film — allowed Caroline and Dave to combine their travel plans with work and they arranged to film at a sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica and an orphanage in India at the turn of the year.

“In Costa Rica we worked at a Aviarios sloth sanctuary, where they look after baby sloths who’ve fallen from the trees and rehabilitate them into the wild. We were keen to go there anyway, so we contacted them about filming — and we caught on film something David Attenborough didn’t; a sloth swimming. We were really lucky to see that in the wild as it’s really rare.

“But it’s so important to do local work. I grew up in Accrington and there weren’t opportunities to be involved in creative projects like this.

“People keep telling us to move to Media City Salford, Liverpool or London to get more work.

Their latest project has emphasised the importance of home, working on the Pennine Lancashire-wide Liberating Empty Terrain project in Hyndburn, which aims to use town centre spaces to showcase creative industries.

Caroline and Dave have been busy speaking to Accrington residents, finding out about their favourite spots, to create a Creature Comforts-like animation for the town.

She said: “We are interviewing people, asking their favourite places for a cup of tea, or to buy meat, and things like that. We’re working with a writing group at the library and people have done poetry and prose for us.

“When we’re recording people have said: ‘Oh no, I don't like my voice’, but I tell them we do and they’re the perfect people to talk about Accrington.

“I’ve grown up living here but I have discovered new people and places by doing this, and seeing the place through someone else’s eyes.

“Everything is here in this area but you just have to find it. We interviewed someone who said Warner Street was the Carnaby Street of Accrington – we just have to pull out these places.

“It’s not about competing to be the same as the big cities. It’s finding the places we all love.

“There’s an American man in the library group, and his answer was that he liked the people living in the community – which was a really nice way to think about it.

“There’s so much potential in Accrington. When you take time to talk to people there’s so much interesting stuff there.

"It’s like they say, everyone’s got a story in them. That’s something I’ve always thought about, and giving them the opportunity to tell that story.”