Glasgow City Mission is a place where people are encouraged to come as they are, to eat together, and to be invited to a life where they can thrive and flourish. The Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) has a similar mission, to create ‘film for everyone’. We were delighted when the GFT created a pop-up cinema experience for some of our guests.
Rosa and Nicola from the Community Outreach team at the GFT organising this event with Clare O’Sullivan, our Urban Co-ordinator.
Clare has been collaborating with the GFT for years. The partnership has grown from some smaller events, starting with screening films from the Women over 50 Film Festival four years ago. This led to the GFT inviting guests to screenings, and being made aware of community friendly events like Pay What You Decide screenings.
Rosa and Nicola visited Urban a few times to meet some guests before the screening. They met guests to decide collaboratively which film to screen, and to invite them to the screening.
Rosa said, “As part of our community outreach project at GFT we have held lots of focus groups and pop-up consultations with small groups of people in different places. The small groups Clare introduced us to at Glasgow City Mission were already genuinely passionate about film, so it made a lot of sense to collaboratively choose which film to watch. We showed the trailers of 4-5 films, which fit the theme chosen by the group; celebrating Glasgow film, and we settled on The Angels’ Share. The Angels’ Share is set in Glasgow and is quite uplifting.”
The choice of film went down well, after the film one person said, “It was brilliant!” and another person said, “I enjoyed it.”
Rosa and Nicola responded to the group’s passion for film, and wanted to make this a ‘fancy’ film event; with a red carpet from the GFT, a hired Selfie Pod complete with film style props for guests to take fun red carpet selfies.
The GFT provided pizza, Irn Bru and refreshments for a Glasgow cinema experience. Guests really appreciated the atmosphere, someone commented, “It was lovely, it was absolutely wonderful.”
After the film, panellists Siobhan Synnot, a writer and broadcaster, and Eddie Harrison, a writer and journalist, discussed Glaswegian identity in cinema. This discussion was translated into Farsi, to include our Iranian guests.
One guest reflected, “It (the film) was good. I got the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Being told you will amount to nothing.”
Our thanks go to Rosa and Nicola and the GFT for such a great event. Clare looks forward to continuing this partnership through 2023 and ensuring the arts are accessible to our guests.
