Leading Audio Visual Designer and Documentary Maker Kim Beveridge Joins The Cumnock Tryst Online Workshop Lineup

Kim Beveridge is a freelance digital artist, part-time college lecturer, documentary film maker and Audio Visual Designer and she is the latest professional lending her expertise to the A Musical Celebration of the Coalfields community opera project.

Due to the restrictions imposed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the first stage of this major project - a series of free workshops on the creative process and self-expression through writing, photography, video and sound recording - launched online in October. Featuring some of the most famous and best exponents in their fields and hosted by Sir James MacMillan, each workshop examines a different way in which members of the local community can get involved and share their stories.

Thanks to the success of the online workshop series so far, Kim has been tasked with hosting her own ‘how to’ session aimed at allowing past and future participants, and other local individuals and groups who wish to contribute to the project, to ‘upskill’ in the areas of film and photography. As we all know, the past few months of the pandemic have seen our reliance on digital technology increase hugely and for some of us, this has been a steep learning curve. For others, it has increased the desire to learn even more and to finesse the use of the tools that are available.

In her workshops, Kim will talk through everything from what we should look to capture, why this is important and how best to do it. She also outlines why ‘perfect’ does not always translate to ‘impact’. 

As well as hosting her own workshop, Kim will also work with renowned Royal Conservatoire of Scotland affiliated composer, performer and sound artist Alistair MacDonald, to create four themed films using the imagery, film snippets, sounds and words shared by those who have contributed throughout the online workshop series.

We caught up with Kim to chat about what she does and how she got to where she is, why she thinks film and photography are so important, as well as what we are to expect from her workshop:

How did you first get into the world of film and photography?
I studied Digital Art in Glasgow at college back in 2000 then went onto study ‘Time Based Art’ at the Art School in Dundee. Straight after graduating in 2005 I started working for the National Theatre of Scotland, generating images and video content for their online presence. As they are a ‘theatre without walls’ and as such they don’t have their own theatre space, from the birth of the organisation a big emphasis was put on audiences being able to see and experience what went on behind the scenes via video content. This was also the same year YouTube was launched so it all kind of kicked off from there.

What do you think that images and film can do in a way that words perhaps cannot?
I think the old saying "A picture is worth a thousand words” is true and when pictures and words are combined, well, they have the power to create real change. Look at Ken Loach for example. One of his first TV films Cathy Come Home (1966) came out around the same time as the launch of the housing and homelessness charity Shelter, and together they helped bring the issue of homelessness to the public consciousness for the first time in the UK.

You have very kindly agreed to host this ‘how to’ workshop for us. Why did you feel it was important?
For me personally, when starting out on a new project there can be a fine line between being inspired and being overwhelmed with information and ideas, be they technical or otherwise. I hope this workshop will empower the participants to head out and take photos or create videos with the help of my compositional tips and tips on how to utilise available light. I also want to show those taking part that much can be achieved on your phone. You do not need professional equipment to create dynamic and interesting images.

Is your workshop accessible to anyone, or do you need to have a certain level of skill and a particular type of camera/film equipment to take part?
The workshop will most certainly be for everyone. If you have professional kit that’s great, and we will be covering the technical aspects of composing strong images, but more importantly I will be asking questions like ‘why we photograph’, ‘what makes an image work’ and ‘does an image need to be technically perfect to convey mood and feeling’ - the answer to the last question is NO and I’ll be demonstrating that.

If participants take one thing away from your workshop, what do you hope this is?
I will be sharing a wee video I made of myself at home chatting to the camera about how to get the best quality footage without any professional equipment. The video is a bit embarrassing, as it is made up entirely of me messing about in my house. However, I think it’s important to ‘put your money where your mouth is’, so if I’m asking folk to film themselves for this project, it’s important I’m willing to put myself out there too! Hopefully, it will be informative and a little bit of fun to watch.

Also, one of my favourite things is to do at the moment is walk my dog, listen to ambient music on my headphones and take images on my phone of the environment I’m in. I feel present when I’m really looking at the details around me, it relaxes me so helps my mental health as well as my physical well-being because I end up walking for miles.

In a nutshell this is what I want to share, what I want people to take away from the workshop - the pleasure in taking images and not being bogged down with the technicalities, being in the moment and capturing that moment within an image.

You can sign up for Kim’s workshop on the 25th November @ 7.30pm and our other remaining workshops with Pete Stollery and Chris Packham here!