Our Story

My name is Helia Phoenix. I'm a writer living in Cardiff. Two years ago, some friends and I got annoyed with all the negative stuff we kept reading about Cardiff in the national newspapers.

So we created a website called We Are Cardiff, designed to give a more authentic account of the lives of ordinary people who live in our ordinary little city. The website has been pretty successful - but we think we can do more.

Now we want to make We Are Cardiff - the movie!

The Impact

We've always said we wanted to give a balanced version of the kind of city we live, in rather than the one dimension (drunks/hen and stag parties/general undesirables) you get from most national media.

But if you look at the We Are Cardiff website, you'll see we've still not really achieved that. We have a collection of lovely stories from lovely people, but there are parts of the city that we don't have any stories from, and countless minorities and community groups who deserve to be featured.

We haven't had any funding and have been running the project in our spare time, just because we felt like it should be done. But because of the limited time and resource, we haven't managed to be as comprehensive in our city coverage as we wanted.

So what better way to get the balance right than in a film? "We Are Cardiff: Portrait of A City"?

We feel passionately that we live in a great city that has a lot to offer, and has some really amazing people living in it. We want to document that - as a snapshot of a place in time.

What We Need & What You Get

We aren't film makers. (not at all). We have our strengths - mine is writing, Adam's is designing, and Simon's is all things web. We'll be planning the film, interviewing our people, and doing any graphic design and web building ourselves (as those are things that we can do).

BUT we need to rope in the talents of film types to help us film the interviews and sequences for the film, and edit the whole thing together so it looks good and is a joy to watch. Hiring equipment and doing post-production work all cost money, and we have no skills to do that stuff.

So we're looking for a little cash to help us get this thing shot, edited together, looking lovely, and ready to view!

Once the film has been created, it will be put online on a website where it can be streamed live and watched by anyone, anywhere, anytime, though we're also planning to have a screening and launch party in Cardiff before the film goes online. We want to have the film completed by the end of 2012.

If You Are Cardiff - if you live here, or love the place, or are just interested in helping some struggling artists try and put something that might be quite lovely together about this wonderful capital of Wales - then we need your help!

In return, we can offer a variety of exciting bits and pieces in reward for your support. And our gratitude. Our eternal gratitude.

Other Ways You Can Help

If you can't afford to spare any cash (we understand, times are hard) - please support us by posting links to our IndieGoGo campaign on Facebook or Twitter or anywhere else online (and please tell people in the real world too!). Also if you can donate any time or skills to the project (anything technical OR perhaps you could suggest potential people for us to feature) we really need that too!

You could also join our group on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

We really appreciate any help we can get. We're actually very grateful you were interested enough to even read this far down the page and haven't switched tabs to go look at some LOLcats or videos of a dog called Fenton chasing a load of deer across Richmond Park...