New video game pits Dickens vs Waghorn
Plus a play that revisits the Miners' strike, Medway-based director's film is a hit on Netflix, an update on the Gills, we review Spoon, our weekly events guide, news in brief, and more
A university research project turns Medway’s unique history into a fighting video game where Dickens, Waghorn, and take each other on. We’ve been finding out more. Further down, we have details of a play at Spotlites this week that revisits the Miners’ strike, we talk to a Medway-based director whose film is topping the Netflix chart, and our Gills columnist updates us on the team’s rollercoaster season. That’s not all, as we also review Spoon in Chatham, have our weekly events guide, and of course, news in brief.
New video game pits Dickens vs Waghorn
Medway Fighter is an upcoming co-created video game led by Canterbury Christ Church University with input from the residents of Medway. We spoke with project lead Jon Schwochert, a senior lecturer in Games Design, to learn more.
Medway Fighter is a research project led by Canterbury Christ Church University and Electric Medway, co-created with Medway residents. “We're co-creating a video game that draws attention to cultural heritage from Medway”, says Jon. “It's part of a research project. What I'm looking to explore is if engagement with the co-creation of a video game can promote cultural heritage.” Medway is Jon’s adopted home. He lives in Rochester and commutes for work to Canterbury, “I think Medway has got a huge amount to share.”
Jon is a senior lecturer in Games Design, where part of his job is research. “I love practice-based research”, he notes. The type of research where an article sits in a journal that maybe a dozen people read doesn't interest him at all. “With this project, it's not just about co-creation and culture, it's also about having fun and a great experience with people around me and making something that hopefully enriches people's lives”.
Jon is a 2D artist and illustrator. He worked for a year at Nintendo, and has also worked on animations and comic books. He started working at Christchurch after he grew tired of freelancing and a great opportunity arose on a course that resonated with him and his values. He started working on Medway Fighter last year and hopes to finish the project at the end of 2026, “but the project is behind schedule already.” They are looking to release the game online and via arcade cabinets, which will be “dotted around Medway, as part of the Electric Medway festival, and then hopefully find a permanent home afterwards.”
Jon says he has been asked a number of times about how he came up with the original concept, “but I can't remember the light bulb moment.” He had been doing a lot of research around using innovative methods to engage people with arts and literature, for example using comic book workshops to engage people with classical literature. “I thought, why not extend that to games design and why not make a fun project that I can not only run, but also be a part of and work with people on.” As Jon mentioned, the project is behind schedule, with the biggest blockage, perhaps unsurprisingly being “time and money.” They received some funding through the university and Electric Medway received funding as well, “but right now it's a one man show” with organisational support from Electric Medway and the participation of participants in the workshops. “Well, I shouldn't say it's a one-man show, but in terms of the core team, it's me right now”.
Jon spends late nights in his cellar, marking student work, preparing his semester and wondering “when am I going to get more time to do something cool on Medway Fighter?” Whilst the project is scalable, it can be completed with his university funding and his skills and abilities, the question is “how big, how fun and how cool do we want to make it?” The more funding Jon can get, the bigger the project can become, but it’s about more than that. “The greatest resource in this project is really people's participation, and people really seem to enjoy doing it and engaging with this project.” Jon has been doing arts events and community events held by Electric Medway and launched the project at Medway Rapture Gaming Festival.
What actually is the game? The game is a Street Fighter style game set in Medway. There will be additional story elements where characters can explore the towns and find their opponents. “What we're doing right now is asking people to volunteer ideas for who should be in the game.” They are also seeking ideas for how the game should play, what sort of fight mechanics should be in there and in what settings should be involved. “It's crowdsourcing of ideas”, but as the workshops progress, participants will have the opportunity to make artwork for the game, as well as create code. “We've had some other great suggestions. Will Adams, the first non-Japanese samurai, is one of the most popular ones.” The prototype features Dickens versus Waghorn.
Jon is currently trying to line up as many workshops as he can to crowdsource ideas, some of which will be open public workshops. “What I'm trying to do is target more niche organisations to make sure I get a broad spectrum of input into the game.” Whilst Jon values the contributions of teenagers so far, he wants to capture a broader range of ideas. “I'm looking at setting up workshops with audiences that might not typically engage with a video game workshop. We had a woman who was near pensioner age, and she brought in 10 pages of typed research that she had done just for that workshop.”
There is almost a working demo of the game ready. “We have one that's close to release. I'm hoping to have it released by this summer. A small prototype.” Jon is hopeful that when the game is released next year, that won’t be the end, and further updates will be possible. “I think the way the project will live on after completion is taking what I've learned from the project and delivering that to academia, to industry, and hopefully promoting similar projects.”
If you would like to participate in the project, you can visit the Medway Fighter website, where you will find a participation form and signup to receive notifications about upcoming workshops and the progress of the game.
In brief
🎥 Former Medway student Mdhamiri A Nkemi’s short film Original Skin is now available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
🌊 Work has begun on a new water play area at the Strand in Gillingham. It is aimed at children aged 3 to 11 years old and will be open from 24 May.
🥙 Master Kebabs in Gillingham has won the Best Regional Takeaway award at the British Kebab Awards. This is the outlet's seventh consecutive award in the category.
Play revisits the Miners’ strike
Undermined is a one-man play about the Miners’ strikes of the 1980s, and it is coming to Chatham this week. We spoke to creator and star Danny Mellor about how he came to create the piece, and Ivor Riddell, President of the Medway Trades Union Council, about why Medway should be interested.
Undermined is a one-man play set during the Miners’ strike. It was originally written when Danny was at drama school as a final year piece, which he had to write, direct and act in. “The play depicts the lives of four different miners from their perspective and goes through the highs and lows and the humour and the sadness of the year-long struggle from the perspective of four Yorkshire miners”.
“The strike was in reaction to the Thatcher government attack on trade unions and the closure of many different pits around the country”, explains Danny. “There were going to be thousands of job losses and hundreds of pits closing. Profitable pits that were making money.” The strikes were a reaction to miners losing their jobs, losing their pits, and then as a result of that, losing their communities. It is this feeling that Danny hoped to capture through his play.
Danny wasn’t born until 1992, so didn’t experience the effect that the pit closures had. “I think for me, the interest came from when I looked at news footage and would see somewhere I knew. It was fascinating to me that once our place was on the news. It was the focal point of current affairs.” For Danny, the hardest aspect was to get the information across. “My main task was to try and translate that into a way that was interesting for an audience who didn't know anything about the strike, I had to make it accessible.”
Since graduating from drama school, Danny has toured with the play and performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. For Danny, the fun part has been the experience of performing four different parts. “You've got this one character as the focal point of it, but then you've got the three other characters that help give variety.” The characters are friends who work in the pit. They're all picketing together, and for Danny, it's about bouncing between those characters. “It was really important to show all these different voices.” Danny researched for the play by watching documentaries and reading available diaries and interviews. “I can't mention everything. It's only an hour-long show”.
The Miners strike of 1984/85 was much closer to home than readers may realise. “We had three pits in the Kent coalfield”, says Ivor Riddell, President of the Medway Trades Union Council. “They were among the most militant of all the coalfields.” The play has poignancy for Ivor as the day the play is being performed in Medway “is the 40th anniversary of the day Kent miners marched back to work. Two weeks after every other coalfield in the UK.”
Kent didn't open up until the early 1900s. “It was quite young compared to most fields.” The county had no mining tradition or skilled workers, so the mine owners had to get workers from other coalfields. “Most of the recruits were union men, or as the bosses called them, ‘troublemakers’, that struggled to find work elsewhere”. Kent’s coalfields were heavily unionised from the start and had a reputation for tough workers. “That slowly became a tradition and reputation worth upholding.”
Undermined is being performed at Spotlites Theatre in Chatham on Tuesday 11 March. Tickets are available from £5.
Medway-based director’s film is a hit on Netflix
Escape from Pretoria is a prison break thriller based on a true story, starring Daniel Radcliffe. It is now available to watch on Netflix. When we discovered the director, Francis Annan, was living in Medway, we met with him to talk about the film.
“I think there's a slight difference between prison movies and prison break movies. They do different things”, says Francis. “When you tap into a prison break movie, you're looking forward to the juicy set pieces and them doing cool, ingenious things” Escape from Pretoria is based on a book, ‘Inside Out: Escape from Pretoria Prison’, written by Tim Jenkin, who was one of the three who escaped, so Francis worked to make the film as faithful as possible. “To the point that we actually used the same tools. It's amazing. I don't want to spoil it for anybody but he brought his chisel to set and we used that.”
Pretoria is in South Africa and became the judicial centre of the country during apartheid. “It was unique because during the apartheid, if you were Caucasian, if you were white or Jewish and you were against apartheid, then you were sent to Pretoria, a political prison for white males.” There was a criminal wing and there was another wing dedicated particularly to white political prisoners. “During my research I realised that it was the only white political prison anywhere on earth.”
Francis got involved in the project after he was approached by producers who had seen a short film he made. They had the rights to the book, and the author was clear that he wanted the story to be about the escape. “One of the earlier drafts that I wrote had a lot more politics, before deciding to go with the energy of the book”, a decision enforced by budget restrictions. The focus of the film is “the ingenuity of it and this idea that if you're a political prisoner, then trying to escape is a political act. It's a duty.”
With Francis on board as writer-director, the film needed a star. “I had watched Dan (Radcliffe) in a movie called ‘Imperium’, which I really enjoyed. The producers weren’t sure because he had done comedies and odd films, and thought a thriller might not be for him.” But Francis was sure that if they offered the film to Daniel, he would go for it. “The whole team read it. They loved it. He (Daniel) read it in a week and said he's thoroughly intrigued by it. I met him the following week.” Francis and Daniel talked about geopolitical affairs, not the script, but the context of what it could mean to be a political prisoner “and what it would mean to be backed into a corner where incredible acts were the only option you had left.” Daniel was in.
The film has now been picked up for streaming in the UK by Netflix. “A friend of mine, texted me ‘Your movie's about to come on Wednesday’”, which was the first Francis really knew about it. “On that day, I got 20 text messages saying, ‘Your film is on Netflix.’” The film was the second highest viewed that week, after the Super Mario Bros animated film, which would be quite the double bill.
“The film is always relevant and current because it's a period movie. It's got its own time. Dan gives a knockout performance and everyone who watches it says it is edge of your seat. On a weeknight or a weekend, get some popcorn, it's a classic prison break thriller, but with heart to it and a message that we should try and stand up for what is right, even in the face of national opposition.”
Gills! Gills! Gills! An update on their season
by Ben Hopkins
5pm last Saturday: ‘The Last Waltz’ rings out around Priestfield. Gillingham have valiantly, if not entirely convincingly, battled to beat relegation-threatened Morecambe 1-0. Christened by rare February sun, the hardcore fans in the Rainham End have given their most upbeat support since those long forgotten September days when it felt as if anything was possible. Perhaps we could put that staggeringly bleak thirteen games without a win down to some kind of footballing seasonal affective disorder.
10pm on Tuesday: Newport - concrete jungle where Gills’ dreams are killed off. A 3-1 capitulation feels as if Saturday had never happened.
And so Gillingham return to semi-purgatory, nine points clear of 23rd-placed Morecambe. Emotionally, are Gillingham in danger of relegation? Yes, it’s hard to see where another win is coming from. But are they in danger logically? A very cross-my-fingers and pray-to-my-choice-of-deity not really. Morecambe’s form over the course of the season extended across their remaining matches would leave them level on points only if Gills lost all remaining twelve games. And even in that scenario, you’d also need a similar run from Tranmere (currently 22nd) to see Gills go down. Feasible? Yes. Likely? No. Just don’t mention Wycombe away in 2010.
So we’re not in a position to experiment with ideas for next season, and barely any of the squad is both definitively in favour and likely to stay anyhow. There’s an alternate reality in which we’re already drinking margaritas on a beach somewhere hot, but the blunt truth of League Two is that you’ve got to turn up, log on and grind out.
Dreaming of promotion? No, I’m dreaming of a late winner at Cheltenham after a clearance hits Robbie McKenzie’s arse and goes in. I’m dreaming of not having to get a cab from Stoke train station to Port Vale. But mostly I’m dreaming of what comes after the next 58 days, when the club is hopefully safe and this incarnation of Gillingham becomes a thousand-yard stare of a memory.
Out to Dinner: Spoon
In which Steven Keevil assesses the Dinner options available in our towns. This week, he’s been down to Spoon in Chatham…
Spoon is a monolith of a restaurant at the bottom of Manor Road in Chatham. You know it’s a classy joint because they charge you to enter, and the price you pay is based on height. Spoon is an almost industrial sized all you can eat buffet restaurant, seemingly at war with a Medway population determined to challenge if they can really supply all that they want to eat. They also offer a bottomless soft drink option, which you have to join another queue to pay to get your glass. Do not consider sharing your bottomless drink, which will incur immediate wrath.
I am not saying that there is a crisis of confidence with the restaurant’s core mission, or their ability to cater to the palette of Medway, but, as well as its extensive range of beige Chinese food, there is also a Sunday roast option, curries, pizza, and lots more.
Across three piled-high plates, I had BBQ pork ribs, chicken satay, spring rolls, stir-fried mushrooms, salt-and-pepper chicken, chilli chicken, belly pork, duck in hoisin sauce with cucumber, Chinese chicken wings, steamed pork buns, pork in black bean sauce, noodles, and some intestinal distress.
With the clock ticking, you pay for a limited time at the table, so you challenge yourself to get your money’s worth, with enjoyment of food coming a far second. There is so much MSG that your brain gets overtaken and you delight in the fried sticky goodness, telling yourself you have never eaten so good. Afterwards, you stand outside in the cold and reconsider your life choices that led to this moment. All whilst your brain wonders: ‘Can we go again?’
Spoon is a bit of an institution in Medway, with many people talking of it fondly. I remember when Spoon was really good, back when it was Cosmo, but that feels like a far cry from today.
Events this week
✍️ Sat 8 Mar - Hidden Words // Join master printmaker Heather Haythornwaite and writer Sam Hall for a keepsake pamphlet-making workshop. Chatham Dockyard. Free.
🛍️ Sat 8 Mar - Rochester City Vintage & Artisan Market // Stalls across the high street selling gifts, art, and handcrafted items. Rochester High Street. Free.
🎶 Sat 8 Mar - EP Launch // Cream Soda are celebrating the release of their EP, With Rhino Tranq, Vinyl Glass and Dockyard. Three Sheets to the Wind, Rochester. Matinee, £3
📖 Sat 8 Mar - Fourth Coast II // Big Trouble returns with a second installment of readings and conversations, with Maggie Harris, Philip Kane and Jessica Taggart Rose. Unitarian Church, Chatham. Free.
🧱 From 8 Mar - BrickWrecks: Sunken Ships in Lego Bricks // Exhibition featuring large-scale shipwrecks of real ships made from Lego. Chatham Historic Dockyard. Tickets £28.50 (includes Dockyard entry).
🙋 Tue 11 Mar - Undermined // Danny Mellor’s one man play about the 1984 strike by the National Union of Miners. Spotlites Theatre, Chatham. Tickets £5.
🐌 Tue 11 Mar - Memoir of a Snail // Beautiful and heartbreaking animation from the Oscar winning animator Adam Elliott. Odeon, Chatham. Tickets £6.
More Authority
MidKent College is undergoing an extensive programme of works to ensure that both of their campuses are carbon neutral by 2030. It’s an ambitious plan that is causing changes throughout the organisation. We’ve been finding out more about what’s been going on.
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Music that soundtracked the creation of this edition: Baroque Anxieties by Little Storping in the Swuff and It Hurts Me Still by Juju Claudius.