Helm Wind film funded by Fellfoot Forward grant

5 April 2024

During the Fellfoot Forward Landscape Partnership Scheme, 2020-2024, grants were available for groups and organisations involved in community projects in the Fellfoot Forward scheme area. Artist and film-maker, Rosa Prosser, from Armathwaite received a grant to make a film about the Helm Wind:

“If the Pennines are to be described as the backbone of England, then the Helm Wind is the shiver that runs down that spine. Bringing bitterly cold weather from a north-easterly direction, the Helm Wind, which draws significance from its status as the only named wind in Britain, is notorious amongst those of us who live within its domain. Having been born and brought up in the village of Armathwaite, I have grown up in the Helm’s furthest reaches, as it is known to span towards the River Eden as its western boundary.

Whilst living in London, and studying a masters in documentary filmmaking, I became obsessed with the idea of ‘capturing’ the wind on film. In this visual medium, we have no way of knowing if the wind is present unless it interacts with something on screen. The Helm Wind thus became somewhat of a mythical idea for me, and I started to explore the ways in which objects, people, and landscapes made it manifest.

In ‘Touching the Helm’, I started with stories, following the voices and people who brought life to this wind. The process of filming, which took place in November 2023, very much embodied the form of the wind, and I allowed myself to be blown between and around both people and conversations. I am grateful to everyone that gave their time – those in the film and the voices unheard – who sat with me and spoke about the wind. As we enter the month of April and the Helm Wind is set to blow, I am reminded of Tom’s rhyme: “If it blows for three days it’ll blow for nine, and if it blows for nine it’ll blow for three weeks (or something like that)” and his rather honest words at the end, “If I was going to tell you any more it would be fiction”.

Rosa graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA in the History and Philosophy of Science, she is currently completing an MFA in Creative Documentary by Practice within University College London’s Public Anthropology Department. Her work seeks to explore encounters with the ‘more-than-human’ through the methodology of sensory ecological ethnography, a site-specific and embodied approach towards research communicated predominantly through the moving image.

Rosa’s research into the Helm Wind is ongoing, so if you would like to share stories, understandings or experiences, please email her. You can follow Rosa on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rosa_prosser/