By Liv Hammond
\nHi all! It’s Liv here, the Community Advocacy and Engagement Officer at The Traveller Movement. Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with Lisa Smith and Hazel Marsh about their fantastic new short film A Basket Full of Eggs.
\nIn 2023, Lisa founded a production company called Patrin Films. She was fed up with seeing the inaccurate representation of Romani (Gypsy), Irish Traveller and Roma communities, especially around Romani (Gypsy) women. Lisa decided that to be able to tell the stories she felt were important, the perfect platform was a production company. She says that her main goal and focus is to amplify Romani (Gypsy) and Irish Traveller perspectives.
\nLisa and Hazel met around 10 years ago, and when the opportunity came up to work together to create A Basket Full of Eggs, the excitement was palpable for both of them.
\nHazel is a professor at the University of Anglia and has worked a lot on Latin American issues around indigenous people and coloniality. Back in 2008 she started to think about how universities think about Romani (Gypsies) and Irish Travellers. Hazel realised that most of the academic work in the university library focused on problems, deficit and low outcomes. She felt that whilst this was important, it was giving the impression that these issues are inherent to the communities, and that’s not the case. She began thinking about how we need to focus on what it is in society that’s reproducing inequalities – why does society do this to certain groups?
\nHazel has a love for folk music, and plays it herself. Due to her interest in her own Romani (Gypsy) heritage, she was aware of how much of the material on the folk scene are songs originally recorded from Romani (Gypsies) and Irish Travellers, yet they’ve never been fully recognised or acknowledged for it.
\nThe project began when Hazel and Esbjörn Wettermark, research associate with Access Folk at the University of Sheffield, got in contact with the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in London, which is the headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society – so they have lots of material. Hazel applied for funding at the University of Anglia, the project worked with Dr Jo Clement to create a resource for the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website.
\nHazel tells me about how folk songs often get preserved in a way that the stories of the people get lost, so within the resource the project team made sure to include photographs where possible. Afterwards, Hazel had the opportunity to apply for more funding, and began thinking about how a film would be great. When she began speaking to Lisa about the idea, Lisa shared that she knew Liza Mortimer, the great granddaughter of Minty Smith and Liza had already made a short film called “Take us as We are” that honored her great grandmother. She knew there was a strong musical link and contacted Liza and she came on board as a co – writer and presenter.
\nThey wanted to bring to life the stories of Liza’s great uncles Jasper and Levy, and her great grandmother Minty and other lesser-known Romani singers. The film includes music from beginning to end to really showcase the contributions that they made to English folk music.
\nThe feedback on the film has been excellent, I personally had the opportunity to watch it and the stories are fantastic. The film has mainly been shown to folk audiences, who often say that they had no idea how much of the material they sing has come from Romani (Gypsies) and Irish Travellers. Hazel suggests to them that when they sing these songs, they acknowledge where the songs come from.
\nHazel and Lisa have so much more that they’d like to work on, including a documentary about Romani (Gypsy) and Traveller activism in the 1960s, as there was so much activism taking place at that point in time. They would love to create a feature film that brings together folk music, folk tradition and activism, as these strands are often overlooked. They say it would be a dream to build and expand on what they have started with A Basket Full of Eggs.
\nIt was such a fascinating chat with Lisa and Hazel, and I came away feeling incredibly inspired. For me, what really stood out was how amazing work can take place when Romani (Gypsy) women work together and share a passion for uplifting their community and the stories they’ve grown up hearing. We talked at length about how Romani (Gypsy) language, music, dance and style is so ingrained into British culture, without people even knowing the true roots. I can’t wait to see what Lisa and Hazel do next.
\nYou can watch the trailer for A Basket Full of Eggs here.
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