00:00 There's something a little bit special about this cinema. It's been built by the community
00:04 and has been created in an old spinning mill in Leigh. The mill has been under construction
00:09 since before the pandemic and is now home to a variety of community spaces. These include
00:15 spaces for sports such as archery and table tennis, a cafe and of course, Leigh Film Society's
00:20 new cinema.
00:21 Leigh Film Society has been around for nearly 10 years and we've never had our own cinema
00:26 space. We've always hired venues as and when we needed to. It's been on the back burner
00:31 for a long time, we've talked about it for a long time, let's build our own cinema. And
00:36 then Spinner's Mill came on the horizon about hiring units within the mill, which is a really
00:43 exciting concept and we just said, let's go for it. Let's see what happens. Let's take
00:48 a leap of faith.
00:50 One of the very few advantages of the lockdowns and things like that was that we had time
00:55 to think about it and plan it and get the skills that we needed. So my wife's background
01:02 is in space planning, so we kind of got together and designed that area, the bar area.
01:08 The tables in this bar have been crafted by hand from parts of the old mill and the idea
01:12 behind it was to keep the original industrial features of the building alive.
01:17 And we're just trying to make a space where people, where they like to be, where they
01:22 want to spend some time, but also that has a feel of where they are. Because we are in
01:27 a mill, we're in an industrial building. It's an industrial, the town has an industrial
01:33 background and we wanted the space to fit.
01:36 The cinema isn't the only space rented out in the mill. There are already rooms up and
01:41 running and many more on the way.
01:43 The floor two, there's mainly, it's like a sports and activities floor. There's a cafe
01:49 on there, which is some of the best cake you'll ever have, it's lovely. But there's also a
01:54 table tennis, there's archery, there's a gym, there's personal fitness or something there.
01:59 And then floor three, as far as I'm aware, is mainly like small businesses, community
02:04 groups, there's charities on there. That's where I think human rights are, we work with
02:09 quite a bit. And then this floor is going to be the cultural floor.
02:15 The building is already a community hub. Floors two and three are currently open to the public,
02:20 with floor four to be opening a computer museum and Leigh Film Society's film factory shortly.
02:26 Our launch event is to sort of say, here we are, this is us. It's a special event for
02:31 people who have funded us, our trustees, our patrons, just to say, this is what we are,
02:38 we're ready to go and thank you so much for all your support. We set out an ethos about
02:43 how we were going to use film and how we wanted to be perceived by the public and our audiences
02:49 that were going to come along. And we've been very transparent in our message. We're about
02:53 film and entertainment, that's for sure. But also we want film to fight against social
02:59 isolation, that people can come on their own but they feel part of a community cinema family.
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