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Wave of Light

10/18/2013

On October 15th, International Babyloss Awareness Day, we held our Wave Of Light event at the Never Land Memorial Garden at the Brimington Crematorium in Chesterfield.

The event brought together all the families in our film, in once place, for the first time. At 4 – 6pm our families met and had tea and delicious homemade cakes together, many of which were made by Vanessa Thatcher. They shared a deep bond, due to having all experienced similar circumstances and it was lovely to see them together, spending time and supporting each other.

We interviewed Nicky Whelan, Chair of Chesterfield Sands, about how the garden came about, and what the Wave of Light was all about.

We spent the day frantically setting up the garden and transforming it into an magical place of wonder and light. We had help of over 30 crew. Scot and Graeme of Handspring Design brought their beautiful apple shelter which we decorated with lights ornaments, it looked stunning. The staff at the baby garden loved it so much, they may be going to commission them to make one to leave there on a permanent basis, and it would be lovely, it fitted in perfectly.

At 6pm the public started to arrive and it was overwhelming the numbers that turned up. Seeing all those families who had suffered the same tragedy of the loss of their babies was really very emotional and it hit home hard just how prevalent stillbirth and baby loss is. We opened by having a beautiful lantern parade through the woods and the strewing grounds of the crematorium and then entered the magical baby garden lit up by fairy lights, festoons and every kind of beautiful lighting.

Just before 7pm Nicky Whelan gave an opening speech and did us the honour of lighting the Wave of Light candle in our beautiful lantern, and everyone else lit their candles in memory of their precious babies, taken from them too soon.

Jay Cooke remembering his sons Jak and Harrison.

This was a hugely emotional moment. We then had a totally amazing live song by Meg Birch that she had written especially for our film called Brighter Day. This was followed by a moment of silence while people reflected and remembered their own babies. There was some very touching moments where some of the parents reached out and comforted each other, it was so hard not to cry while filming this.

After that there were three readings of poems by parents in our film, Julie Cooke, Matt Gaunt and Mel Scott.

We also had a display of candles we had lit for all the babies of our sponsors who had helped us make the film by donating on Kickstarter, and those that couldn’t make it to the event.

Following this there was a chance to write dedication tags with beautiful sentiment to the families babies. These were then hung inside the gorgeous apple shelter. This was accompanied by another gorgeous song by Nic Newman.

There was also live fire spinning and lovely refreshments and each person was given a lovely goody bag on departure from the Chesterfield Sands team. It was a really special event and the families that attended had a lovely time.

We’d like to thank so many people for helping us get this event together. Many companies dedicated time, money and energy to enabling us to bring this event to so many families at a hugely reduced cost on our low budget, and they are all very much appreciated. All our Big Buddha Films crew, and a mass of volunteers that came on board to help us out, Chesterfield Sands, Brimington Crematorium staff who were so helpful and accommodating, Ashely from Endcliff Park Cafe and his brother Fraser from Totally Gazeeboed, Abigails Guest House in Chesterfield, Ascott Marquees for loads of lighting, loads of friends that lent us so many fairy lights and lanterns, Handspring Design for the gorgeous apple shelter, Meg Birch and Nic Newman for their beautiful songs, Bardwells Electrics in Sheffield for their kind donation of lighting, all the kind companies that donated fantastic auction prizes to raise money for the event, which we will hold later as we ran out of time on this beforehand and so many other people and organisations.

Our main crew on the night were:
Director – DebbieHoward
Producers – Colin Pons and Polly Perkins
Assistant Producer – Emily Axon
Dop’s – Emma Dalesman and Paul Wiseman
Aeriel Photography – Vu Air
Sound – David Mitchell, Heather Jordan, Daniel Mager, Neal Robinson
Stills – Jacqui Bellamy
1st AD – Georgia Ball
Spark – Adam Charvet
Production Assistant – Tom Corden
Riggers – Scot Fletcher and Graeme Ritchie
Singers – Meg Birch and Nicola Richie

and loads of fantastic runners and helpers who we couldn’t have done this without.

We have some wonderful rushes and stunning footage from Vu Air from our helicam shots. It was difficult to pull off shooting a multi camera shoot during such a sensitive live event as this and we’re incredibly proud of having got such great results for our film whilst people still getting so much out of the event itself.

A big huge thank you to every single person that attended, especially all our families that traveled up to Chesterfield from as far as Somerset, and to all our crew and every single person that played any part in helping us to pull this event off, from months of work to lending us a set of fairly lights, it all came together beautifully and we couldn’t have done it without you.

For more pics of this wonderful event please see our main photo gallery.

Photo’s by Jacqui Bellamy
http://www.pixelwitchpictures.co.uk/w/doku.php

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