In 2018 Settle Stories successfully bid for funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to deliver a Young Roots Project in Settle: Tom Faulkner: A Portrait of Stories. Those of you local to Settle may know that Tom Faulkner was a well-loved local photographer who documented the lives of ordinary people and special events in Settle in the 1950’s & 60’s. Tom’s work is the only detailed photographic record of ‘The Settle Pageant’, celebrated in style in Settle, in June 1953. This makes his photographs a valuable part of our community’s heritage and this project particularly poignant.
Settle Stories turned an empty building on Chapel Street, Settle, into a public gallery exhibiting a selection of Tom Faulkner’s pageant photographs. These photographs and the stories that have come from exhibiting them will be re-shared and re-framed in an exciting new exhibition at the end of the project in 2020.
A number of local people, who appear as children in Tom Faulkner’s pageant photographs, have come forward to tell us their stories of the day, their memories of Tom Faulkner and of life in Settle in the 1950’s. Watch this space to see how these stories will be shared as the project progresses.
In May 2019 half-term holiday Settle Stories invited young people aged 11-16 to join them to work towards a Bronze Arts Award by taking part in Picture This! a free creative arts and heritage project run at The Joinery. Picture This! provided a week of free creative arts and heritage workshops, where participants explored how personal stories are shaped and shared through:
In November 2019 Settle Stories curated a mini-exhibition of photographs from Tom Faulkner’s 1953 Pageant Album in Settle Community Library. Alongside this exhibition they ran a number of community events including: Picture The Story – a family fun day and The Boy In The Velvet Hat – a talk by local resident John Reid.
Meet Blossom and Twig formed part of The Story Garden series running every Sunday throughout the Yorkshire Festival of Story 2020. Due to Covid-19 this was an online festival running across August 2020. The Story Garden series was inspired by Tom Faulkner’s photographs and stories about the 1953 pageant in Settle. You can watch all of The Story Garden videos here
As part of YFOS2020 we hosted a digital screening and Q&A with a local young film-maker, Juliet Klottrup. In many ways Juliet’s film, Youth of The Rural North echoes Tom Faulkner’s photography in that it seeks to reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary.
The Folly: Museum of North Craven Life
6 October – 22 December 2020
An exhibition at the Folly that marked the end of this 2 year long project with contributions from young people at Queen Elizabeth school.
