Three Men and a Pram-Cam

From Gavin Peacock's The Man From Icon: "Just back from Stoke and our PramCam excursion which was a great success. 15-18 miles of walking and 6 hours of footage. Started in Mier at around 6.45am and through Longton (15 minute stop under a railway bridge because of rain deciding whether to abort or not), Fenton, Stoke, Hanley, Burslem, Middleport and finished up in Tunstall at 3pm." Watch Gavin's video footage of the excursion here.



BM - Brian McClave
TW - Tom Wichelow
GP - Gavin Peacock
MH - Mishka Henner

MH: Something that really struck me that I've tried to capture in the pictures is that you're going past so many landscapes and buildings. Asian shops, funeral shops, boarded up buildings, new buildings. Is that something you were planning?
BM: We've deliberately planned a route through the city that in each area encompasses a variety of things from parkland to derelict areas, and nice areas. Variety has been the main director of the route.
GP: We've only had a vague route, planning a mile ahead almost but if we see something that looks interesting we'll follow our noses. But the plan was just to take in all six towns that make up Stoke-on-Trent. When we came the first time and drove around it didn't make sense to do something in just one area because there are these six separate towns with their own identities. So the idea of this film is to take in all six towns.
MH: Is there a theme running through all your films?
BM: We're dealing with issues of space and time and that ends up being refelected in the technology that we use - making stereoscopic three dimensional films. On a wider conceptual level, in terms of the ideas we're working on and the technology we're using, we're either slowing things down, speeding them up, or viewing them in three dimensions. We're looking at this place in terms of its history and its future by twisting time and manipulating spatial stuff in terms of the medium we're applying to it. What the outcomes will be like I don't know. We'll have a clearer idea of that when we look at it and assess it together.
TW: As we've been walking today, it's dawned on me just what we are going to see. It was planned to a certain extent. We followed our noses and for me that's the appeal of what we've done today. The places we've stumbled across have been delightful.
GP: It's an amazing way to find out about the place - walking through it in a day from top to bottom.
MH: You've probably done something that many people living here have never done. What would you say you've learnt from doing that?
TW: It's given us a great overall impression of the place. Almost waking up and seeing a place come to life, seeing how many people are around at a particular time, where the traffic is going, how people look at a particular time of the day. Just getting a feel and morale of the place.
BM: And the sense of the landscape. We've commented a lot as we've walked along about the different nuances of the landscape and how varied it is.
GP: They are six very different places that seemed to be joined by main roads more than anything else. There does still seem to be six separate towns joined by big roads.
MH: Does industry or traces of industry link them in any way?
BM: There's an over-riding sense of industry and decay wherever you look, and also of past wealth.