大象传媒

The Newton Rebels project was the basis for us to start our company, Solid State Creatives.

The Newton Rebels project entailed a lot of work and research. The story takes place 400 years ago when Thomas Tresham, a local landlord in the Newton/Geddington area, was enclosing the land that the common people used to farm.

A scene from the film

Another local landlord, Edward Montague, tried to talk sense to Tresham, but Tresham didn鈥檛 want to hear it. He tried to take the concerns of the common folk directly to King James I, but he the King didn鈥檛 care.

A man by the name of John Reynolds, more commonly known as Captain Pouch, galvanized the common folk. He led them to rebel against the landlords and eventually led them to there deaths at the hands of Tresham鈥檚 army.

Making a movie

Most of the Solid State Creatives team - Adam Jaggard, Owen Hurrell and me, Eric Sithole - used to frequent the William Knibb Centre to play basketball, break-dance and to do parkour.

Local people acted in the film

We got to know some of the Youth Works staff, such as Cindy Wrighting, through doing these activities. Cindy is the head of Youth Works CIC and had just received funding to do a Newton Rebels documentary.

As we had already completed the same two-year media course at Tresham College, Kettering, we were the natural candidates to help set this up.

We gave technical advice on equipment, and we started drafting an action plan for Cindy. It was decided that it would be beneficial for everyone if we did the project and, in the process, used the Newton Rebels documentary to start the company.

Cindy agreed to this and gave us training to be youth workers and then we went about starting Solid State Creatives.

Music videos

We created a base website, recruited Edward Kitchen, who was also from our media course and then we got to work.

The rebellion was eventually crushed

Amidst the Newton Rebels project we did a lot of other projects. The music videos we made for a London musician called A/D (Jump Off, Updown, Feel Good & Broken) can be viewed on YouTube.

The Newton Rebels documentary was made as part of an information pack that will be sent out to schools.