Waltham Forest Cinema Project community consultation #1

On Sunday 29 September, I held the first in a series of consultations about the cinema plan I’m working towards under the banner of Waltham Forest Cinema Project. The goal of the project is to bring an independent community cinema to Waltham Forest.

‘Community’ is one of those vaporous words it’s easy to gloss over. These meetings are an attempt to draw out the specifics of what local people want from a cinema space, to situate the community’s need in an eventual cinema. While I’m under no illusions that only a certain kind of person will come along to a consultation like this – community minded, probably a regular (indie) cinema attendee already, at least 90 minutes to spare on a Sunday – I hope that each time we host an event like this we will get closer to describing what we’re talking about.

I’ve spent the last ten years working in cinemas, traveling to cinemas around this country and outside of it, and I’ve come to realise there are very few definitional elements that make up a ‘cinema’. You can make a beloved cinema that matters with quite bad projection, uncomfortable seats and a dubious location, and you can make a high-spec, can’t fail cinema that fits the mould exactly that isn’t embraced by the community. The reasons that venues succeed or struggle are both very big (it’s not in the right location, the programming is all wrong, the staff are indifferent) and very small (defined by a thousand smaller things that express a ‘vibe’). Having a firmer sense of what these smaller and bigger things are from the people who are likely to come is a cheat code to success as far as I’m concerned.

These consultations are a bit like the parable of the blind men and the elephant. I’m very conscious of my blind spots as to what the community in Waltham Forest wants and how to get there. But together we can describe what we want, as what works in Waltham Forest is different to what works for Harringey or Hackney, from what works in Harrogate or Hawick.

I’m really grateful to everyone who came to the first consultation and for their permission to share some of the bigger themes we discussed below, so more people get a sense of what happens during a community consultation. If you have thoughts, very happy to discuss with you if you couldn’t make it! Even if you don’t live in Waltham Forest, I am always up for more thoughts on cinema making.

• Being local changes your sense of what you’d consider watching: We spoke a lot about how having a local venue massively de-risks the experience of going to the cinema. There are a lot of barriers in London to giving your time to going to the movies – financial, caring responsibilities, geographical – but we all felt that if a venue is a) reasonably cheap b) on your doorstep, not only would you go more often, it would change what you’d consider watching. We spoke about the Lexi, the Castle, Peckham Plex and Genesis as good examples of this, where attendees felt they’d taken a punt on a wider range of films because they knew it wasn’t going to cost them a lot, either on tickets or transport. I’ve got a lot of resistance to the ‘come infrequently for something you know you’re going to like and spend a lot’ model that the boutique cinema tends towards, so I’m glad others felt the same.

• A desire for genuine community space within the cinema. Members of the group were keen that it was a space where people could just be, without an imperative to spend money. We talked about the Warm Spaces policies of other venues locally, as well as the Southbank Centre, the Barbican and local libraries were good examples of where this worked and engaged different people in their communities. There’s definitely some balance to be struck around paid food and beverage (which even if your running costs are lower is still necessary to be sustainable) and making people feel they’re on a meter or freeloading if they want to just be in the space.

• A space for discussion. One of the common points was that people wanted to have a deeper space for discussion, to watch films of all kinds – not just with capital-letters-Big-Issues – in a space that supported deeper conversation about them. We talked about The Garden Cinema’s defined post-film space for discussion as a good example of community building. I’ve often found it personally quite strange and alienating that I go and see a radical film at ICA or BFI, feel quite fired up and then there’s a reticence to use the collectivizing power of film to do more to foster change, that the like-minded people in the room are scattered. Becoming an activist space has a lot of challenges – your venue can become a proxy for other issues in society, which puts a strain on what you can actually do and can make staff’s lives difficult with limited material benefit towards your political goals –but giving a more structured space for discussion is interesting and feels different and specific. Moreover, people also just wanted some time to sit with the film and have a space where they felt they could speak to others. Having a venue that is situated within a community helps with this. If I go to a central London venue, the ‘stranger danger’ inhibition is stronger, whereas feeling like someone might be a neighbour changes your sense of that. A cinema venue focused on these kinds of goals has a very different social capital to a multiplex. How do we embrace this without making the cinema feel like a closed club? If people have examples of venues where they felt more able to speak to others, let me know!

• A space for families: We spoke about how venues can embrace families and reflect the people who live local to Waltham Forest. We talked about ways in which it’s clear that ‘this is for you’ when it comes to families such as offering toy boxes and also having enough space for kids to move around, as well as programming for kids. The Young V&A was cited as an example where a venue had gone out of its way to remove any barriers to entering, accessing the spaces and interacting with them. This changes your sense of ownership and connection to the space. I am really keen to bring in elements that kids will be keen to play with in the space.

• A space for music or other cultural space: There was some consensus that Waltham Forest lacked other music venues and also book shops. As a former publishing bod, I have a lot of time for book shops personally and I think including other retail is a fun idea when you’re gathering people together. It becomes a platform to demonstrate other things you are interested in and means people stop in more frequently. Local artist sales is another avenue, as well as a lending library of DVDs or Blu-Rays (a la Close-Up). We also talked about the value of a space like the Genesis that had multiple ‘zones’ that offered opportunities for different types of experiences and events. 

• Genuinely independent: People mentioned that one of the things they felt proudest of in Waltham Forest was the potential for things to happen here – to move from idea to execution – and for exciting independent businesses to get a route in and thrive. I am really keen for the venue to be a platform to showcase this and do a lot of collaborations.

• Does boutique comfort matter?: We all agreed that it was important to give people a good enough projection experience that made it worth leaving the house, but people had flexibility with the idea that the seating etc would be more traditional rather than boutique, which has predominated in new cinema openings. There are cinemas that balance this – Castle’s pricing is reasonable in non-peak times but they’ve also got (ex-hotel!) armchair comfort – but the greater emphasis in the group was on pricing accessibility rather than a luxury experience. 

• Design of the space: We talked about the physical design of the ideal cinema, that the cinema should be really dark and then the foyer really light; it should ‘feel like a release when we come out.’ Others felt it should be ‘cosy’ as a priority, as some London spaces can feel hard-edged and brisk. 

Thanks for reading! Lots of food for thought for me. As far as the project goes, over the next six months I want to…

• Host four more screenings as part of the project to build a local audience

• Do a series of community tours to scope out former cinema sites and potential new cinema sites, to try and find a temporary or permanent space to work in

• Deliver a fundraising bid to take the project to the next stage

• Host at least one more community consultation, to gather more ideas on what the cinema could be

If you want to be involved in any of that, email me!