Hanging around at the Courtyard? Check out the Flicks

Borderlines has teamed up with the Hereford Photography Festival and The Courtyard to put on an exhibition of photographs of Flicks in the Sticks venues by Hereford College of Arts' student Rob McLean during the Borderlines Film Festival. Here is Rob's statement of what attracted him to the subject:


Flicks in the Sticks is a project run by Arts Alive, which was founded in 1999. Using a combination of professional technicians and generous volunteers, it has helped to bring almost 600 films each year to rural locations in Herefordshire and Shropshire. The Trust works at over 120 venues, from village halls to churches and even woodland.

These images are just some of a collection that was taken in the locations where Flicks in the Sticks movies are shown. They are intentionally focused upon only village halls, as the transitory nature of these buildings helps to emphasise the very nature of the project.

The community aspect of these events is deliberately missing from most of the images shown, as often the clashes between the current users of the halls and those who were there previously come to light in fascinating ways.

More than anything, I hope the images highlight those in-between moments when all attention is elsewhere. I feel that this is directly indicative of the environments that the films are shown in.