On Friday 26th and the afternoon of Saturday 27th, we screened a couple of our archive films at Lucem House Community Cinema in then heart of St Helens. Friday’s screening of The Houghton Project was followed by a discussion with some people who were involved at the time, Barry Gore, Esther Wilson, Andy Cave and Roger Hill.

We had a reasonable turnout given the hot weekend weather and it was great to watch the film with a collective audience and their response. This was interesting, generally, people were not just looking back with a ‘It used to be great back then’ perspective, but with more of an impetus to ‘Why can’t we do something like that now?’ The 80’s for St Helens were in many ways a tough time for the town with many local industry and employers closing down, yet, it was also a time for immense creativity. In some of the interviews we’ve done, people talk about this sense of waiting for something to happen and it kind of feels that way again.