Nichola Fletcher -
Beatrix Wood’s Memory Bank and feature film Magician in Wood.
In the summer of 2020, while I was Chair of the Tim Stead Trust, I received an enquiry from Beatrix Wood of TrixPixMedia, a film maker then living on South Uist.
Her late husband had visited The Steading and been deeply inspired by seeing Tim’s work. Beatrix wanted to make a feature documentary about Tim to inspire other people, with the frame story of what Maggy was going to do with The Steading and whether the Trust could secure funds to protect Tim’s legacy. Naturally, Maggy and the Trust were enthusiastic.
By this time the Covid pandemic was taking hold of everyone’s lives, so Beatrix had to restrict her visits to just Maggy and me. Whilst none of us knew what the outcome of the fund raising for The Steading would be, Beatrix filmed the relentless slog, the successes and the disasters of this process - culminating in the joyful gathering of Trustees on the day we finally achieved our goal.
Beatrix had some excellent footage and some archive material, and when Covid restrictions lifted, she wanted to expand the cast to make her fully rounded film. Doing this as well as editing, adding text and music is a costly process and the Trust had no funds to spare. So we applied to Scottish Borders Council for a CLLD grant that enabled Beatrix to make a ‘Memory Bank’ of twenty-three 2-10 minute videos featuring the huge variety of people with all their stories about working with Tim and the impact of his work and ideas. We were overjoyed to be awarded the grant.
Beatrix arranged for David Peat’s video archive of Tim creating the Botanic Ash exhibition to be digitised, and she included this unique material in the edit. The films are a valuable archive resource for the Trust, and they allow many more people to experience Stead’s legacy. Memory Bank also allows disabled visitors to The Steading to see the parts they cannot access (some stairs are difficult to negotiate). We can also use them to illustrate anything we feel needs highlighting at any point.
The Outcome
Beatrix then edited the Memory Bank and other material she’d shot into the full-length feature film: Tim Stead -Magician in Wood, which she funded with a Crowdfunder campaign and from her own personal funds. It was premiered in spring 2024 at the Sharmanka Kinetic in Glasgow https://sharmanka.com/ and MacArts in Galashiels https://www.macarts.scot , with Maggy returning from France for the events. Since then, the film has been selected for over 16 international festivals, won 5 awards and been nominated for 4 more. Beatrix has arranged 30 Q&A screenings at cinemas and venues across the UK and is working with an Italian sales agent to arrange further distribution. Future screenings are listed on: https://trixpixmedia.com/ and TrixPixMedia’s Facebook and Instagram.
The film has inspired a whole new audience of people to visit The Steading and learn more about Tim’s work. Beatrix’s film and the Memory Bank are huge assets for the Trust, and we are profoundly grateful for her tireless work, and the Scottish Borders Council for funding the Memory Bank.