Click on each town or village for audio impressions, films, links and more
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WINDROSE Rural Media Trust is a charity which has a twenty-five year history of using television, radio, archive film and the internet for the benefit and pleasure of local communities.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is one of Windrose's projects. It enables you to discover villages and towns through old films and new recordings about each place and through the perspectives of the people who live and work there. There are also website links to all sorts of local services and activities.

At present Close Encounters is a prototype, covering only four locations. It is intended to build this into a much more extensive network.
Other recent Windrose projects
  • Future Farming Voices
    Radio programmes made by young people from farming backgrounds. Hear them on the FFV website.
    http://www.futurefarmingvoices.org.uk
  • Farming in Wartime
    Young people recording people who farmed during the Second World War.
    http://www.futurefarmingvoices.org.uk
  • Wessex Ridgeway and South Dorset Ridgeway Audio Trails
    A series of recorded journeys through Dorset countryside, encountering local people and fascinating knowledge on the way. Hear them on these websites:
    http://www.dorsetaonb.org.uk/our-work/south-dorset-ridgeway/explore.html
  • Capture Somerset
    Discovering and saving more old cine films of Somerset and training local people to chronicle life today on video.
  • Film Music
    New music commissioned to accompany "Dope Under Thorncombe", a wild melodrama filmed by local people in the 1930's on the Dorset coast (features on Close Encounters).
  • A Century of Salisbury District on Film
    A publicly available DVD featuring a wide range of archive films, together with local people's memories (excerpts feature on Close Encounters).
  • Dorset AONB Oral History Project
    One of a series of projects in which local people are trained and supported in making oral history recordings in their own communities.
  • The Windrose Film Archive
    Windrose is constantly saving and copying old films of life in Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire, so that they can be seen again in shows all over the area. If you know of any films please contact Windrose.
How Can You Help?
As a charity Windrose is constantly seeking funds for its projects and for its ongoing film archive. The more public donations it receives the easier it is to provide the matching funding necessary to attract support from charitable, public and lottery sources.

The film archive in particular has to have a long-term future and the costs of saving and copying films are very high. Endowments and bequests can make all the difference to its progress in rescuing films of local life. These films are the nearest we can come to living history but are also vulnerable to loss and destruction.

Your help will be very gratefully received.
To send donations or to discuss endowments or bequests please contact:

Trevor Bailey
Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane,
Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ

01747 840750

tbailey352@btinternet.com
If you are a taxpayer and wish to make a donation, please complete a simple Gift Aid form and send it to us with your donation. This will enable us to reclaim tax and add to your support.