Berwick-upon-Tweed is sited in traditionally and famously contested land, set exhausting by the border between the English and the Scots and altering palms between the 2 nations some 14 occasions. That location has made it a garrison city, one given huge, state-of-the-art Venetian-Empire-style fortifications within the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and an imposing barracks, designed by the nice architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, in 1717-21, 20 years earlier than the “Forty 5” and Bonnie Prince Charlie’s legendary march south in his failed try to revive the Stuart monarchy to England in 1745.
A brand new community-based movie, Parade (2025), by the London-based artist Matthew Rosier, is exhibiting for 3 nights solely this weekend, celebrating the city’s numerous Twenty first-century group and its historic barracks (for some years decommissioned and residential to the city museum) by projecting the movie onto the large partitions of its parade floor, depicting group teams—youth theatre, soccer groups, the Royal Nationwide Lifeboat Establishment volunteers, veterans of the King’s Personal Scottish Borderers, pipers and dancers—march by in flip in all their vibrant selection.
The parade floor of the barracks at Berwick-upon-Tweed, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, exhibiting the three partitions the place Matthew Rosier’s Parade is to be projected {Photograph}: The Artwork Newspaper
The Parade undertaking has been commissioned by Berwick Shines, The Dwelling Barracks Cultural Engagement programme. The movie’s performances come simply as English Heritage prepares to embark on constructing works with companions together with the King’s Personal Scottish Borderers (as soon as based mostly on the barracks and as a consequence of reopen their museum there in 2027), the Maltings Belief and Northumberland County Council to develop the barracks right into a cultural hub with a contemporary, purpose-built gallery and exhibition areas. On 28 February it was introduced {that a} £4.5m grant from The Nationwide Lottery Heritage Fund has been awarded to English Heritage on behalf of the Berwick Barracks Partnership.
A historical past in group film-making
Over a number of days’ filming in early February, in combined climate, a lot of it arriving bracingly off the North Sea, all kinds of teams strutted their liveried and uniformed stuff for Rosier and his staff on location on the barracks. Rosier made the movie in collaboration with what he describes as a “significantly wonderful manufacturing” staff from the Maltings arts centre. The ultimate model of the movie is being projected on to the barracks partitions, round three sides of the parade floor, at ten occasions life dimension.
The Grand Finalist Mr Homosexual GB 2024 is projected on to the partitions of the barracks parade floor, Berwick-upon-Tweed, as a part of Matthew Rosier’s movie Parade (2025) Jennifer Charlton Images / Courtesy of The Maltings Berwick Belief
Rosier has a observe report in filming with British communities, pulling collectively their collective tales. He tries, he tells The Artwork Newspaper, “to get a consultant number of individuals from that group and to get to know totally different teams and other people after which making a [filming process] that will get projected again into the city”.
His first such undertaking was in Macclesfield, in Cheshire, the place, he says, he made “a projection on a staircase via the center of the city. And folks got here out to see primarily every week within the lifetime of that staircase. And it was fairly astonishing how individuals responded simply to seeing a replaying of individuals and character as a result of it turns on a regular basis life right into a sort of filmic expertise, which was fairly pretty to see.” For an additional undertaking, at Pontefract in Yorkshire, the movie was projected “on to bushes and reworking individuals into bushes … and that was extra narrative pushed”.
Nancy’s Dancers are projected on to the partitions of the barracks parade floor, Berwick-upon-Tweed, as a part of Matthew Rosier’s movie Parade (2025) Jennifer Charlton Images / Courtesy of The Maltings Berwick Belief
The size of Rosier’s tasks has been rising over time. “With these tasks, he says, “it is at all times how do you change into consultant and it is finally about making a state of affairs the place individuals are conscious of what is occurring after which they really feel it is accessible they usually really feel like they’re actually invited to be a part of it. And in addition that it is an thrilling prospect.”
At Berwick, Rosier and the Maltings staff ran “info days …we would current the undertaking over and over, and a great deal of individuals got here. And the concept was that folks would come … [and] disperse the message extra broadly. After which we had a few months to get the schedule in place for the filming days.” In the end the filming concerned 800 individuals, or practically 10% of the city’s inhabitants.
The River Tweed Wild Salmon Firm is projected on to the partitions of the barracks parade floor, Berwick-upon-Tweed, as a part of Matthew Rosier’s movie Parade (2025) Jennifer Charlton Images / Courtesy of The Maltings Berwick Belief
Come the filming days, Rosier put down the relaxed ambiance to the group teams’ enthusiasm and to working with the choreographer Chloe Smith, who’s from Berwick. “That was an necessary a part of the proposal,” he says, which he pitched in an open name. “That I’d work with an area choreographer in order that I could be directing within the background, ensuring all the things’s accurately [while she is] there on the forefront making individuals really feel snug and have enjoyable.”
Laser-projected efficiency
For the three evenings when the movie is proven on the parade floor, the viewers will stand and the staff will use 11 projectors—”very punchy laser projectors”, Rosier says—mounted on small towers positioned centrally via the parade floor, in the midst of the viewers.
Whitadder Uncommon and Native Breeds is projected on to the partitions of the barracks parade floor, Berwick-upon-Tweed, as a part of Matthew Rosier’s movie Parade (2025) Jennifer Charlton Images / Courtesy of The Maltings Berwick Belief
Earlier than his transfer into making movies for and about group, Rosier educated in structure. He was, he says, “fairly concerned with know-how and extra within the public house a part of design slightly than the constructing a part of design.” What he found via public artwork particularly, he says, “is a means of making experiences that convey individuals collectively”.
He’s concerned with altering the setting “in a means that’s comparatively gentle contact”. Projecting his group movies is, he says, an ideal instance of that. “Since you do not want actually something there on the bottom, it simply transforms, it is like magic. And I feel that is when know-how is at its strongest, when it does really feel like magic.”
“It was simply reworking one setting into one thing else,” he provides. “Remodeling the barracks into an enormous parade, reworking bushes into individuals, reworking a staircase into its previous reminiscences of itself. and that is at all times how I’ve checked out it.”
Rag Bag Morris dancers are projected onto the partitions of the barracks parade floor, Berwick-upon-Tweed, as a part of Matthew Rosier’s movie Parade (2025) Jennifer Charlton Images / Courtesy of The Maltings Berwick Belief
Yet one more take
Again on the parade floor for the penultimate day of taking pictures in early February, Rosier is behind the digicam and Chloe Smith is getting ready a junior soccer staff and their coaches, watched on by warmly clad dad and mom—properly schooled within the seasonal climate by numerous Saturday afternoons on chilly midwinter touchlines—for a 3rd take. It’s within the third take that Smith hopes to get every group nearly dancing.
And with that final dancing take, the city of Berwick is aware of that it has come one step nearer—earlier than Rosier embarks on a two-and-a-half-week dash of post-production—to witnessing its each day life, and its diverse communities, projected again in town’s historic barracks partitions as a filmic expertise.
Ten occasions life dimension.
Parade, Berwick Barracks Parade Floor, Berwick-upon-Tweed, 28 February, 1 March and a couple of March.
