Ffilm School learns by making together

In Welsh, dysgu means both to teach and to learn. That’s our approach. We’re a group of people conspiring to make a film collectively, not a class where knowledge is handed down. The guides are making too. We’ll work together on one film, and everyone will lead making parts of the story. We’re ambitious. We believe that we can make something in this time which will get festival screenings. We’re definitely going to try.

We’re after real, filmable ideas: people we can meet, places we can take our cameras to, sounds we can record, action we can witness. We’ll conspire, not compete. If you don’t see yourself as ‘arty’, good — you’re another perspective that deserves to be heard.

why this project, why here?

We’ve accepted funding from CO₂RE, a UK research hub looking at ways to draw carbon out of the air and store it on, in or under land and sea. That funding steers our focus towards what these plans would mean here, in the Dyfi, Rheidol and Ystwyth watersheds (including Pumlumon/Plynlimon).

We strive to remain critical and independent as we make work about these practices. The selected conspirators, in communication with the local community at special screenings, will have the final say on how this story is told. The conspirator-guides (that’s me and Laura) won’t have a vote, we’ll just give our opinions.

domestic science

Imagine the air around the Earth was your sink at home, with a plug, and an overflow at the top. All the time humans have existed, and for some time before we came along, the tap has been running. The sink has always been pretty full, mostly up to the overflow, and there’s always been times when a bit would gurgle over the edge, out down the drain. But it was all fine. The tap never ran that fast, the water in the sink stayed pretty level. About 20 minutes ago your mate came round and found out you could get the dishes a bit cleaner if you opened the tap up and it got a bit more powerful. It was a good idea. It worked. The water went up a bit, but not higher than the top of the overflow hole. It stayed level, just at the top. The noise changed and you could always hear the water going down the drain. 5 minutes ago everyone got really into clean dishes and kept egging each other on to open the tap wider and wider so the water really started piling in. We went in the other room for a minute and, shit, while we were next door, the level went up. Right up over the overflow hole and it just kept on rising. The overflow hole seems little now, it can’t cope. So the water goes up and up and if we don’t turn off the tap it’s going to spill over the top and we’re going to flood the kitchen. So we run back in, and Gareth tries to turn the tap off but it’s bloody got stuck, he can barely close it, or only really slowly. And so Ceri says, we need to pull the plug! They try to pull it but the chain’s come off and the pressure of the water is making it really difficult to get it out with her fingernails. Ali is rushing, but seemingly in slow motion, to get one of those thin spreading knives from the cutlery drawer, to get in the edge of the plug to prize it open a little so a bit more water goes down the drain. We still desperately need to turn the tap off, but it’s helping a bit to slow down the water from going all over the place.

Greenhouse gas removal is Ali’s spreading knife.

OK. So it seems a good idea to open the plug up as wide as we can until we can get the tap turned back about where it was and the level back down to that nice gurgly overflow we used to know. But what if the knife is damaging the plug? What if people don’t want to turn the tap off? What if the people who don’t want to turn the tap off take control of the knife prising open the drain?

This is where it gets into what we’re interested in. We don’t care much about how greenhouse gas removal works, we care about the changes to land, lives and minds that could happen if these ways of opening up the drain were scaled up here, in these valleys. We care about who is in control of it.

five ways of changing this land

There’s too much carbon going into the air and not enough coming out. Plants pull carbon from the air as they grow – in fact they are the carbon from the air – that’s what their leaves and branches and trunks are made from. But when plants die or lose bits somewhere dry and airy, they rot back into the air. But if they’re kept wet they don’t. If they’re turned into charcoal and that charcoal isn’t burnt, they don’t. You can also get carbon in the air to fuse with rock surfaces. Or when you burn it, you can stop it going into the air and pump it deep underground, put it back in the oil and gas wells it came from. These are all ways of removing carbon from the air.

We’re not here to sell any of these ideas, and we’re not here to trash them either. We’re here to imagine what they would do to this place and its people — the opportunities, the risks, the culture clash, the pride, the worry, the work.

1) Woodland — new trees, old forests

What it is: Planting trees or letting woods return. Trees are carbon pulled from the air and stored as wood. Forests hold carbon in trunks, roots and soils for as long as they grow; some trees live a really long time; when wood is cut and used well (like in buildings) it can store carbon for decades.

Imagine it here: Hills that once rang to sheep bells now hold more scrub, more saplings, more birdsong — and maybe more chainsaws. Whose land changes hands? Which jobs grow (planting, fencing, milling, woodland craft, carpentry, construction) and which shrink? What happens to pasture, to the look and feel of these hills? Does Eryri feel so majestic with the trees hiding the view? Native rainforest creeping up a valley may be a dream for some and a painful loss for others. Show us who gains, who struggles or mourns, what dignity is found in the work.

2) Peatland — wet ground

What it is: Peat forms when plants grow in wet places and don’t fully rot because water keeps air out. Over time, that locks up plant carbon in the ground. Rewetting peat stops further carbon loss and can start storing more. It also helps stop flooding downstream, like a really big sponge.

Imagine it here: Ditches are blocked; water rises; sphagnum moss spreads and endangered species do a bit better. Quad bikes get stuck. A farmer weighs up what they can get for sheep on drier pasture against payments for wet ground. They try to get their head round paludiculture (growing crops in always wet fields). They’re going to need better wellies. Beavers are back. Who fixes the drains, who checks the levels, who calls this restoration and who calls it flooding good land? Who realises they don’t get flooded anymore down in the valley?

3) Biochar — fire turned to earth

What it is: Biochar is simply charcoal made for soil, not for burning. Plant matter is heated with very little air (so most carbon stays as carbon) and the charcoal is crushed and mixed into soils. This can lock carbon away for decades or longer and can make soils healthier and more water‑holding.

Imagine it here: A small kiln steaming at a smallholding; someone building a cabin to live in in a plot of forest, making a living from turning the rhododendron and other plants that didn’t grow here before into black dust; a bag of char traded for veg. Or a bigger place like a factory, with lorries, safety briefings and big furnaces where all the garden waste gets turned into charcoal. Is this council-run? Who makes biochar, who spreads it, what grows better because of it? What do we see could happen — and what feels right for this place?

4) Rock dust on fields

What it is: I’d never heard of this one. Enhanced rock weathering. Silicate rocks like basalt are quarried, mainly to go into tarmac on the roads, or in concrete. Loads gets left over in piles because it’s too fine to be used for these things. But if you spread the fine stuff on fields using fertiliser machines, then rain and soil acids slowly break the rock down, which draws in carbon from the air and locks it as bicarbonate. They think those minerals can make soils better and make the oceans healthier when water carries them out to sea.

Imagine it here: A spreader rattles across a hillside field; the driver says it’s the same kit, the same job as before, just different stuff. A quarry foreman points to a mountain of fine black dust, useless for tarmac but now suddenly valuable. A haulage firm gets steady work. A conservationist worries about alkaline runoff onto protected acid grassland. They work out drainage protection measures. Where do the lorries go, who benefits from the contracts, and who says no and why? Tell us the route from rock face to fields, to the public land and the National Park.

5) Grasses, willow, heat and pipes — from field to furnace to undersea

What it is: Plant fast‑growing crops (like willow or tall grasses such as miscanthus) turn them into pellets, and burn them for power. If the power station captures the carbon in the flue gas, compresses it into a dense fluid, and pipes it to old gas or oil fields under the seabed, that carbon can be stored for a very long time. That chain — grow, burn, capture, store — is the promise. Each step has costs, jobs, and choices.

Imagine it here: Fields shift from pasture to tall grass; new harvesters arrive; a new sight of rows and rows of willow stubs sprouting new growth each year; can anything live in these fields? Further away, a big plant hums; carbon is captured with solvents, then pushed through pipelines to the old wells beneath the Irish Sea – Hamilton, Hamilton North and Lennox. Who works those jobs? Where do those solvents come from? Is any of this poisonous? Where does the pipeline run? What do neighbours think of plumes, fans and flares? What is paid, to whom, for what risks?

the wider question: how things are done

Behind each option is a bigger question: who owns the change and who guides it?

Some people count, certify and sell carbon, building business cases and chasing finance. Others restore bogs, plant woods, make char or share rock dust without selling credits at all — because it feels right, or because the community decides to do it. There are also public‑led routes: councils, parks and state agencies acting with communities.

We won’t tell you which is best. We want you to explore what feels fair and life‑giving here. What would a public–community partnership look like? What might business do well, what might they do better, and where would you draw a line? Where do counting and paperwork help, and where do they get in the way? These are tricky questons.

What a strong proposal looks like

We’re not testing you on terminology. We care about your situated knowledge — what you know because you live, work or care here.

Tell us a sceneor narrative we could film. Be specific.

• What would we see and hear? Name the place. Who’s in the frame? What happens?
• Why here, why them? What’s your relationship? Is the story a gift, freely given, or are we exposing extractive power by careful trespass or scrumping? Either can be ethical — tell us how you’ll keep it accountable and kind.
• How will we make it happen? Give us a simple plan: who to contact, when it happens, how we avoid causing harm, how we share back.

The strongest proposals are:

1. Evocative and grounded — we can picture it, hear it, feel it.
2. Doable — you know how to reach it and you’ve thought through the logistics.
3. With soul and care — respect, courage, reciprocity.

your voice matters

You won’t get chosen for sounding very knowledgable about the science. You won’t lose points for doubt, anger, humour or hope. Tell the truth as you see it. If you care about how these changes might reshape work, culture and belonging here, we want to hear from you.

Ffilm School learns through doing — with you, with this land, together.