Past Lives Project is running a one-day Heritage Vintage Tea Rooms with a twist on Saturday, 17th January at Turner Hall, Mansfield Woodhouse, 1-4pm.

There will be traditional English cakes, with tea in vintage china, but instead of charging money for the tea and cake they are asking you to swap them for your local cine film, photos and memories.

They don’t keep your original cine film and photos, instead they will scan and digitise them to add to a new project of Mansfield.

The photos, films, and oral history memories will be edited together to make a new film of the town with live music score by international musicians.

The event will be shown at Mansfield Palace Theatre on 7th February. Tickets are available from the box office, call 01623 633133.

Past Lives Project is seeking out local home movies of weddings, birthdays, families, carnivals, fairs, work, industry… anything that reflects everyday life of Mansfield from the 20th Century.

Past Lives Project, run by FreeFall Arts, is a touring not-for-profit project working with communities to creating art from social history. There is an urgent message behind the project — “cine footage if stored in warm conditions like lofts or cupboards will deteriorate rapidly and archivists estimate that if not digitised soon, much of this footage will be u-viewable and completely ruined within 10 years.”

By digitising the photos and films, and recording the context from the families who own the films, the project wants to build histories of local communities across the Midlands.

At the Past Lives Project open day on 17th January at Turner Hall, Mansfield Woodhouse, 1-4pm, there will be a Vintage Reminiscence Café where visitors can step in to the past, having tea and coffee in china and can swap cake for local memories, photos and cine film (to be digitised, owners will keep their originals).

During the event FreeFall Arts will offer the opportunity to scan local old photographs, share memories and view cine film on a vintage device called a Moviscop.

A Moviscop allows cine film to be viewed without damaging the footage, as recommended by Media Archive for Central England.

With funding from the Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund, the project is able to offer free digitisation to donated cine films showing everyday lives and interesting moments of Mansfield, Ilkeston, Derby or Buxton; the project tours to these areas after Mansfield.

If you have cine films, photos, memories or music relating to these regions or you would like to get involved, you can contact them on [email protected], fill out the form on their website PastLivesProject. com or find them on Facebook or Twitter

The deadline for Mansfield films to be digitised is 17th January. If you are not able to get to the event and have films to share you can contact Past Lives.