The Travelling Harpists

Heritage Lottery Project 2009

The Travelling Harpists is a year long Heritage Lottery project which is taking place in two locations in Wales. The project will result in a film telling the story of the Wood’s family who, in the past, bought their music and way of life to Wales. Cinetig will work with three groups of young traveller children to make the film, and the project includes visits, workshops and talks on the theme of traveller culture and history. Director Gerald Conn says the aim of the project ‘is to celebrate Romany culture in Wales, and by involving modern day travellers we will add an extra dimension and help to create a positive image’

 In October 2008 Cinetig visited Bynea school in Llanelli which has as special unit for traveller children where they worked with the school to produce part of the animated film. In February 2009 Cinetig visited Monkton Primary in Pembrokeshire which also has a special unit for traveller children aged 5-15, where the main part of the project was taking place. Two weeks of activity began with a visit from Welsh Storyteller Daniel Morden. Daniel has collected stories about the Woods family and re-interpreted them in his book Dark Tales from the Woods. He told these stories to the traveller children, hoping to inspire them about their heritage.

The project began with director Gerald Conn researching into the Wood’s family history - ‘It’s an extensive story so I researched particular colourful characters who would lend themselves to animation such as Harry Turpin Wood, who was a well known fisherman and musician and had a fascination with the story of Dick Turpin. He even had a horse called Black Bess!. I wanted to focus on the contribution to Welsh music in the 19th Century and highlight it’s importance to Welsh Culture, for example John Roberts family often won prizes at the Eisteddfod, and he was called the Harpist of Wales, even playing for the Empress of Austria who was notoriously hard to please’

Jane Hubbard from Cinetig wrote a script for the film, and Jeremy Roberts developed a storyboard ready for the animation workshops at the schools. Traveller children from Haverford west also joined Cinetig at Monkton to work on the film. The animation will be made in a cut out style which will be composited in After FX.

Film Historian Dave Berry also visited Monkton to present films around the themes of Traveller culture. This part of the project is funded by the Film Agency for Wales and Dave talked about the representation of Gypsy characters in films – especially early silent Welsh films. Dave also showed Pavee Lakeen (The Traveller Girl) a film about travellers from Dublin and the story of how they were moved from their site, which brings up issues such as integration and how they were treated by their local council.

Teleri Jarman visited Monkton in the second week of the project to talk about her family as her mother was the last of the Wood’s family line to play music. Teleri will also be the narrator for the film which will include live action sequences in which she and the traveller children will reconstruct a gypsy scene using a traditional caravan.

The film will be presented as part of a booklet which will incorporate a DVD. The booklet will include ideas, drawings, quotes and photos on Romany culture provided by the children taking part in the project