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The Rainbow Circle Vision

The Product

I plan a 60 minute video film about the Rainbow Circle Vision; shot and edited in a lyrical and poetic manner and with some voice overs by one or more Rainbow Circle people, some of which will be in verse.

The Style

The film will be of a poetic intensity and inspirational content which are these days unfamiliar ingredients in our mainstream media, (which in its documentary sticks, broadly speaking, to a journalistic approach where the tone of voice behind the production is almost always the same complacent, boring, bourgeois menopausal person). This product will be far more poetic.

The Subject

Meadows and orchards round Leominster have inspired hundreds of people to a lifestyle lived closer to Mother Earth and less environmentally destructive than, so they claim, life in a typical bricks and mortar house in a city can be.

Over the last few years, scores of men, women and their children have at any one time been settled at picturesque Yoke Farm, Ivington, and other local locations, at the landowner’s or the farmer’s request, living in bender tents, caravans, a replica stone-age round house, and other low cost structures.

Their aim is to escape what they see as some of the worst aspects of fin-de-siecle living. Their belief is that, despite their advantages, the creature comforts and mod cons of the typical bricks and mortar dwelling are bought at too high a price. That is their decision for themselves. They are not saying that everyone else should also immediately leave their homes and move into tents!

But they are saying that, for them, to sit by an open fire with the stars overhead is more important than, say, a bath with hot and cold water or a toilet that flushes. And they feel that this option should be more widely known, especially to teenagers leaving school and wondering what direction their lives might take. Should the nine to five job and the mortgage be the only aspiration?

The Subject

Groups of such folk are to be found in many parts of Britain, but they are largely unrecorded. They are found in particularly large numbers in Herefordshire.

Coming from all age groups and all sections of society, they are united in a wish to live lives that are more environmentally friendly, in the way that the lifestyles of many Third World villages are. Some of their children are educated at the local village school, some at home. A number of them do charity and community work in Leominster.

The landlord of Yoke Farm, one such typical place, is a typical craggy Herefordshire farmer in his stone flagged farmhouse that has changed little over the last 100 years. Meals are still often cooked over the open fire and he is a rough diamond; an awkward old bit of sugar, with a well concealed heart of gold.

Many of these people have been living this life for 18 months or sometimes much more.

Holidays

What do they do for their summer holidays? The answer lies with two other local organisations - Rainbow Circle and Rainbow 2000.

Inspired by Sid Rawle (who once set up an ideal community on John Lennon’s Irish island), Rainbow Circle camps for some years now have been running environmentally friendly camps for up to ten days in tents, caravans, marquees, domes at Windmill Hill, Dinmore, Yoke Farm and other locations.

The atmosphere is tribal and exotic, closer to the Third World than to anything normally seen in this country. City dwellers are here enabled to make up for some of the things they may be in short supply of; Mother Nature, the Call of the Wild, the sound of the wind on the heath.

There is singing and dancing and ritual and the camp brochures carry the warning; ‘Rainbow Circle camps can change your life’.

For most participants ten days are enough but some really do change their lives for much longer; hence the 50 or so people who put on the camps and the people described at the start of this outline.

Among those who heard the call of the wild are a middle-aged former sports administrator and a former nuclear scientist.

The Intended Audience

a) Among the thousands who have used Rainbow Circle and Rainbow 2000 camps over the years, there will be many who will be thrilled at the opportunity to acquire a visual record of what, for many of them, are the happiest weeks of their year and, so they claim, have been the happiest years of their lives.

b) Rainbow Circle and Rainbow 2000, which are non profit making organisations, have tours and also publicity outlets at major music festivals and also visit some schools. This film will provide a wonderful centrepiece and focus for such events.

c) At Hatfield Court, where more of such folk live, I already market such objects in a small way through mail order and also have a small shop at my home where we run holistic educational courses. Among other things I market two cassettes of local poetry and music and would intend to sell ‘The Rainbow Circle Vision’ through this outlet. This is a non profit making operation.

d) I hope this film would form part of a presentation at various local fairs and festivals, for example the Three Choirs Fringe, the Hereford Festival of the Arts, Leominster Festival, the Presteigne Festival, etc.

e) The area of wider circulation such as art cinemas is one of the things we will explore.

How Did It Come About?

I first shot half an hour or so of video to present as evidence to the Inspector of a Planning Appeal held in Leominster Council Chamber. The Department of the Environment Inspector was clearly impressed as we won the appeal!

I became interested in videoing more of this fascinating phenomenon, capturing some of the poetry of the Rainbow Circle Vision.

Why?

1) These people present a vision of another way of being which I feel could be of help to many others who feel trapped in the ‘urban nightmare’.

2) As writer of many successful television and radio programmes, I have for some while enjoyed ‘sailing my own boat’ and directing my own audio cassettes and ‘movies’.

3) Participating in television documentaries, I have grown to dislike the six or eight person crew who so completely destroy, by their presence, the reality they purport to reproduce.

4) We would like to experiment in the use of verse and song in the presentation of documentary and in a much fresher and more direct way of addressing our audience.

How?

In creating an art object which will have its own validity in the world of fluid and poetic film making, an hour long moody and atmospheric Art Film, visionary and poetic, with voice overs by Rainbow Circle people.

Constituted Groups

The project will most probably be activated under the administrative umbrella of one or other of two non profit making constituted groups. I am founder and secretary of one of these, and committee member of another.

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