A big reminder! 'Crafta Webb', directed by Adrian Lambert, is showing at The Hay Festival on Friday May 23rd at 6.30 pm. Tickets are £3.00 - The Booking office number is 0870 990 1299. More details of the event are on the Festival website, www.hayfestival.com This is another local screening of "our" film. Plan to attend and why not persuade your friends and relatives, particularly the local ones, who may not have had the big screen experience yet to come along!!! We had to turn people away at Borderlines, so please book early. We will be screening the drama and the documentary.

Rural Media also has another short film at the Hay Festival following 'Crafta Webb' entitled Dirty Bandages, which Rachel Lambert has made with a group of young people from Gwernyfed. Its a great little short, with a brilliant script from award winning script writer Peter Cox, highlighting the lives and deadly leisure time of many young rural people and their cars. This screening is free of charge, but ticketed. The Community Channel is supported by all the major broadcasters and can be found on Sky and with limited access on Freeview. They absolutely love Crafta Webb and want to screen it all over the summer as one of their leading programmes. In a recent article for Arts Professional, Francois Matarasso wrote: "Nor is there a simple category division between artists and audiences. All artists also engage with the work of others - indeed, their work is in constant dialogue with the creations of other artists - while many audience members have direct experience of creative work as part-time, amateur or occasional artists. Excellence is also within their reach.

I recently saw this in Crafta Webb, a community film made with residents of Bredwardine in Herefordshire by the Rural Media Company. This 40 minute feature film uses the site of an abandoned 19th century settlement to evoke experiences of migration, transience and rural poverty. Local people, supported by professionals, were cast and crew and have made a film that is both sophisticated and deeply moving. If 'excellence in culture occurs when an experience affects and changes an individual', Crafta Webb meets the test."