Rufus Stone featured on BBC Radio Solent

Posted on Wednesday, May 8 2013

Rufus Stone, a film based on research conducted by BU’s Dr Kip Jones, was featured on Julian Clegg’s BBC Radio Solent Breakfast Show.

The research project looked at homosexuality and ageing in rural communities and Dr Kip Jones, Reader in Qualitative Research at BU, spoke to Julian about the project and explained its importance and discussed why the findings were turned into a film.

Kip said about the making of the film, “It took about six years [to make the film], it was a large project of research all over the country. There were three years of gathering research of older lesbian and gay men’s stories who lived mainly in rural areas in the south of England and Wales.”

Continuing the conversation to talk about how it is being used to train and teach communities, Kip said, “We recently held a two day ‘train the trainers’ event where we brought together local councils and service providers and community organisers from all over the country and we worked with them, showing them the film and showing how they can lead discussion groups afterwards.”

Talking on future showings of the film, Kip said, “Bournemouth University is having its Festival of Learning in June and Rufus Stone has two showings, in Poole and Wareham.”

The interview ended with Julian and Kip discussing whether the culture in these rural communities has changed and whether this film represents current rural culture.

You can listen to the interview again for the next seven days on the BBC website.

For more information about Bournemouth University’s Festival of Learning, including the showing of Rufus Stone, on the Festival of Learning website.