Pre-production
The Oakwood Film Academy became aware of the Friends of Roundhay Park’s (FoRP) plans to celebrate the 150thanniversary of the opening of the park to the public, and thought this would be an ideal event to film. With multiple simultaneous activities spread over a large site, three members of the academy (Tony O’Reilly, David Donaldson and David Barnard, each with different makes of camcorders) agreed to film anything of interest on the day, making sure to get permission from anyone they interviewed.
Production
The day, 16th July 2022, from 11.45am-8pm, was blessed with glorious sunshine, so the park looked at its best for the celebrations, with a large and happy crowd of all ages enjoying all the activities spread out below Mansion House. We filmed the opening ceremony, hosted by the Chairman of the Friends of Roundhay Park (Richard Critchley), which included a short history of park by Dr Rachel Unsworth and an official opening by the Lord Mayor, followed by live music and dancing on the stage (and by many in the audience) by a large variety of groups. We then wandered around the various entertainments, such as runaway trains, bouncy castles, bungee trampolines, den building, dressing up as policemen, and a Punch and Judy show (all mainly for children), as well as food stalls for all, and community stalls and a marquee (with Rotary Club, REAP, Women’s Institute and so on), and exhibitions of art, photography and history – something for everyone to enjoy.
Post production
The Academy and Friends of Roundhay had worked together to successfully show short films at the 2024 Heritage Open Days (HOD) at Mansion House in Roundhay Park, and we agreed to do the same for 2025. With other filming and activities, the academy had not got round to editing the clips of the 2022 Festival, so David Barnard volunteered to do this, making a short film, with several drafts shown for helpful suggestions from members of the academy, before colour and sound grading by Tony O’Reilly and Johnny Edmonds.
The resulting film was shown for the first time during HOD 2025 at Mansion House, where Carol Haughton (Secretary of FoRP), who along with Sara Dawson (Vice Chairman) and Jeremy Stonehouse (Treasurer) had done so much of the planning of the celebrations commented that it was lovely for her to see the results of all their work, as on the day she had been too busy to see most of the entertainments.
The film was subsequently made available to members of the FoRP who had missed the original showing.