I spent months filming inside the Faith Museum, Bishop Auckland, for The Auckland Project, from the day the install began to the week the doors opened to the public.

Nothing quite matched the moment an empty room became a Mat Collishaw installation, a huge blue iris projected onto gauze in the museum’s Great Gallery, engulfed in flames yet never consumed, with a Latin choral track running underneath it. Watching visitors see it for the first time, the way their faces changed, was one of the best reasons to be there with a camera.

Filming the Faith Museum’s Architects During the Install

During the install at the Faith Museum, Bishop Auckland, I travelled to London to interview Níall McLaughlin and the project architect, Jacqueline Stephen, whose extension to the Grade I listed Scotland Wing of Auckland Castle takes its shape from a medieval tithe barn. Níall spoke about wanting the building to feel both ancient and modern at once, so a visitor couldn’t quite place it in time. I would have liked to film the actual construction of the main building too, but time and budget meant that wasn’t possible, so the interviews became the way I could still get at that part of the story.

Eidolon: An Empty Room Becomes Something Else

Of everything I filmed during the install at the Faith Museum, Bishop Auckland, the pieces by living artists were what I most wanted to be there for, and Mat Collishaw’s Eidolon most of all. Filming an empty gallery space, then watching it transform into that alignment of light, flowers and flame, was genuinely something to see. Later, filming visitors encountering it for the first time gave the film its most honest moments, nobody performing for the camera, just people reacting to what was in front of them.

A Two Stage Install

The fit out happened in two stages, carpenters and cabinet makers first, fitting the glass cases made specially in Yorkshire, then the collections team locking each case and fine tuning the display technology before a single object went in. I filmed a good deal of that process, though there were pieces I wasn’t allowed to film being hung, for security reasons, since showing exactly how something is secured to a wall isn’t information a museum wants public. Clare Baron and Sam Smith were my main points of contact throughout the install, and no other filmmaker was given access during that period. Their trust made the project possible, and a good deal of what made it into the finished film came down to their judgement on what could be shown and when.

A Building That Keeps Turning Up Its Own History

One of the things that stayed with me is how many of the objects in the Faith Museum, Bishop Auckland, are genuinely local, some of them found on site through the museum’s own archaeology programme rather than acquired or loaned in. Filming a place like this over an extended period, rather than dropping in for a single day, is what let all of this surface.

The London research trip, the slow transformation of an empty gallery, the quiet conversations with Clare and Sam about what could and couldn’t be shown, none of it would have made it into the film from a single afternoon’s filming. As a heritage filmmaker working across County Durham, that longer view is usually where the most interesting material actually is. You can watch the finished film on the Faith Museum project page.