Dr Sarah Spencer and Dr Judith Morgane, the partnership behind arts and heritage organisation Lightbear Lane, share how they are using community film, creative mapping, Shakespeare and asset-based development to help Exeter find its identity, neighbourhood by neighbourhood.

Founded in 2023, Lightbear Lane takes a deliberately inside-out approach: rather than parachuting in with solutions, they ask communities what they already have. That philosophy produced the Proud to Be film project in Mincinglake and Whipton: a co-created portrait of a neighbourhood that generated a wassail song still sung every January, film-making skills workshops, and a set of resources now available for other communities to use.

From those roots, the organisation has grown with work ranging from heritage consultancy at St Nicholas Priory to touring theatre acr ...