Coventry and Warwickshire go round Coventry ring road (again)

To mark the 40th anniversary of Coventry's ring road, BBC Coventry and Warwickshire has produced a short film members from the local community. In this post she shares her experiences making the film culminating in a big-screen premiere last Friday. 

A few months ago I sat down with my editor and discussed what we would do to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Coventry’s ring road, we wanted to create a celebratory tone that would reflect the upbeat nature of the city. I don’t think we expected all our plans for the anniversary would fully materialise but they did, and it was quite a journey.

Coventry’s concrete gyratory ring road has wrapped the city centre for 40 years. For most locals it smoothly transports nearly 50,000 vehicles a day around its 2.2 mile-long tarmac. Many may be surprised that BBC Coventry & Warwickshire chose to celebrate a road’s anniversary in a music video. But, the road which literally divides Coventry, represents the beating arteries of the city and this project was about celebrating where we live.

It started with a poll, everyone has an opinion about the Ring Road, the correct way to drive around it, whether they love it or hate it. Together with our local paper we asked the city to vote. The decision of the vote would result in the cover of one of two songs: Love: Average White Band’s Let’s Go Round Again, Hate: Talking Head’s Road to Nowhere. The city had spoken and there was love for the Ring Road.

Luckily our breakfast show presenter, Shane O’Connor is not only a talented broadcaster but can play music. He became the frontman of our new one-off supergroup, working alongside many talented musicians from BBC Introducing and a few local musical legends. Music was arranged by Thom Kirkpatrick and featured two members of The Specials (Horace Panter on bass and Neville Staple on vocals). After 12 hours in the recording studio, we came out with a 'Coventry sound': a 2-tone inspired cover of Let’s Go Round Again.

That was just the start. No song is complete without a music video. The people of Coventry were brilliant at embracing the song and were happy to be filmed dancing to it - from babies to 90 year olds, the local fire brigade, road workers and the leaders of the City Council. Their contributions plus hours and hours of footage of the ring road, and the all important music sessions had to be condensed down into four minutes. A lot of work, but what a fun four minutes it is is.

The finished film was released online on Friday (the anniversary), and even had its own big screen premiere at a special Drive In Movie event.

Throughout the project we worked closely alongside the Coventry City Council to create a spectacular moment for the anniversary, an event to suit the celebratory feeling of the film. The city council helped realise a Drive In Movie event, a public screening for our film followed by The Italian Job. On Friday, nestled under one of the ring road’s flyovers, a 60 sq ft screen was erected in a car park. 100 free tickets were given away for the event.

At 7pm, Shane O’Connor took to the stage to introduce our big screen premiere of our Let’s Go Round Again film. The crowd just couldn’t stay in their cars as the film was shown, many getting out and dancing around their cars and excitedly pointing out their moment on the screen.

The screening had the most remarkable atmosphere. The perfect end to the project. A particular favourite was meeting Abdul, a taxi driver originally from Afghanistan but now living in Coventry, who had been hired by five people in possession of one ticket, but no car. Abdul had been flagged down to bring them to the screening and enjoyed watching the film for the first time with his passengers.

This project has been very special. It is hard to describe being part of something where you can feel pride bursting from a particular place. But, for two and half hours, that is what happened in a car park in Coventry on a Friday evening.

Siobhan Harrison is a broadcast journalist at BBC Coventry and Warwickshire

• Watch the BBC Coventry and Warwickshire #RingRoad40 film 
• Members of the production team also filmed sequences for the film - watch their contributions here. 
• Read a Storify telling the story of the production in tweets and Facebook posts here.