Filmmaker and photographer Carl Joyce first picked up a camera in earnest while traveling the world. But it’s back in his native County Durham that he’s built a reputation for telling the stories of overlooked communities – and helping to deliver opportunities for the next generation in a region still coming to terms with the loss of its traditional industries.
Horden, part of the former East Durham coalfield, isn’t the most obvious place to nurture creative talent. On leaving school in 2001, 16-year-old Carl was bluntly advised that his careers options would involve the armed forces or factory life. Uninspired by those limited choices and frustrated by a string of dead-end jobs, he eventually decided to travel and work abroad – South-East Asia, India, Australia and beyond. Along the way, he started photographing what he saw and, eventually, spotted a path that offered more than life on the production line.
But a working-class background – Dad was a miner, Mum worked in the local clothing factory – meant it took some time, and some persuasion from his future wife, for Carl to convince himself that his camera could lead to a real career. “I came home and I met Silviya. We’d only been together a short time and I was feeling like I was struggling to fill the gap from the travelling,” Carl recalled. “Silviya asked what I really enjoyed. I started talking about the photography and she asked why I couldn’t turn that into a job.
“But it took a good six months before I could believe her. I was convinced that there was no way I could make a living unless I was breaking my back, I thought hard graft was the only way to earn my wages. It took a while to change my mindset.”
That’s an echo of an upbringing in a community where extra-curricular activity revolved around the boxing club. Apart from its mining heritage, Horden also has a long track record of producing footballers – Stan Anderson, the only man to captain Sunderland, Newcastle and Middlesbrough, is a famous son – and boxers. There was a clear sense of how a man could earn a living, and art wasn’t part of the equation.
Yet it’s a region full of stories waiting to be told. Carl’s most recent release, 'The School on Seaside Lane', tells the story of the demolition of the old primary school in Easington Colliery. It won Best Documentary at this year’s Sunderland Shorts Film Festival, impressing audiences and judges by combining the universal, shared memory of school days with the specific local accent of a major landmark in a village trying to find a future for itself after the colliery’s closure in the 1990s. Previously, Easington Colliery was the backdrop for Billy Elliott, and there’s a sense of resentment that a place “good enough for Hollywood” has been overlooked for so long by successive governments and local authorities.
Other local projects include 'Our Streets Are Numbered', a photo essay in response to the decline of the terraced streets in central Horden. Images of blight and decay are interspersed with shots of a resilient community trying to rise above its problems in the face of indifference along the corridors of power.
For Carl, this kind of work helps to address some of the issues he ran into during his own upbringing.
“I want to give people a voice,” he said. “That’s what I’m most proud of. Growing up in Horden, it felt like we never had that in any of the villages.
“So now I’m going back, trying to work with young people. When you get them writing about growing up in a mining village you can see how proud they are of those words. When we put it on a film we can show it to a wider audience. It doesn’t just stop there. I love giving people that voice within their communities. [It's] the same with the Easington film. Suddenly, thousands of people start hearing these opinions, you create a legacy there.”
After working in the community, it’s important that the finished work returns to its home. 'The School on Seaside Lane' premiered in Sunderland, the closest festival to Easington. Its next public screening was at a pop-up event in the shopping centre in Peterlee, three miles from the old school site. Free entry, free popcorn, and a steady string of visitors who were quick to start sharing their own memories of the school.
“You build up trust. Then it’s important that the people who shared their stories have a chance to see the finished film, to show it to their friends and families without having to travel miles away to see it. They need to be able to pop up the street and see it in their own community, where they feel comfortable, not go off to some flashy, glass-fronted gallery.
“Now, whenever I get into talks about a project, this goes into the initial discussion: where are we going to show it, why we’re going there, which building’s it’s important to show it in. Taking it to the people who created it is vital. It’s something I insist on.”
But this isn’t just local art for local people. A broader reach matters every bit as much. “We want people with influence, it needs to be seen by people who can make a change. Usually that’s not people in the area we’re filming, it’s people further away.”
Change is a slow process. But Carl is optimistic that the current generation of teenagers in East Durham have access to opportunities that his classmates never saw.
“I work a lot in Horden, mostly with 16-17 year olds,” he said “I see kids who really want to get into music; they’re into their rapping, they’re doing workshops with DJs. I do filmmaking workshops with them, there’s a couple interested in filmmaking.
“There was nothing like that when I was younger. I was looking for something at that age and I know it just wasn’t happening. There are definitely more opportunities, and they’re coming to places like Horden, Easington, Blackhall, all the villages. It’s not just somewhere like Durham where you have the university and there’s obviously been more because of that.
“I look at my son, he’s 10 now. Maybe it’s because I’m involved in a creative job, but he believes that he can be anything he wants and he believes he can do it up here. He’ll talk about how I have a job that I like, how my friends enjoy their jobs. He sees something more than the army or the factory. I’m sure how much is because the area is changing and how much is because of where I work, but he sees opportunities now that my generation never did.”
