Ike Wilson is a student and filmmaker whose projects celebrate the creative spirit of his hometown. Before heading to London to study film, he made a short video about Pixel that captured the life of the building—and helped shape how the town sees it today.
Ike, your video is one of the reasons we’re here! Can you tell us a bit more about yourself?
I’m Ike or Isaac, and I’m a filmmaker. I’m doing some social media projects around my town which included that video for Pixel which did really well—like surprisingly well…
I studied media at college and this September I’m going to London to study film. I’m pretty excited about it because I’ve been in Penzance my whole life, and I’ve wanted to make films since I was a kid.
What is it about filmmaking that draws you to it?
I think it’s the storytelling aspect. I’m dyslexic, so my love of storytelling has never really found itself through books and reading. Early on, I was just really intrigued by the medium of film and learning how films were made.
My favourite thing about it is how every aspect of a film is done by a different person with a different idea, with a team each with their ideas. A director will have an image in their head, but then that image has to be conveyed well enough to trickle down through the props, set design, the actors, and the cinematographer. What ends up being made has had hundreds of different hands to help build it. I think that’s the most exciting thing about filmmaking.
Will we see you writing and directing films one day?
That’s the end goal. I make short films in my own time. Other than that, I just love using cameras.
My media course was the first time in education we were just focusing on something I was interested in. I enjoyed the marketing part of it too, learning about audiences. Even when I hate adverts, I can watch them and see what they were trying to do and how they failed.
You made the Pixel video for Richie, how did that come about?
I volunteer with Ritchie at Luna Agile Learning Centre, a space for neurodiverse kids. He’d just got his studio here and was stoked about it. He wanted to make a video giving people a tour, and I was like, “Please let me film and edit it for you, because I think I could bring a lot to the table.”
Then we just rocked up and filmed it in one day. It was before they opened so we had the whole place to ourselves and it was all quite spontaneous. I spent a while on the edit because this was one of the first things that I was being commissioned to do so I wanted it to be good.
Well, you definitely achieved that. Do you still spend time here?
I pop in mostly to see Richie. His music space is awesome and I’ve got a few friends who do lessons with him. But I would love to spend more time here because it’s got such an energy to it.
Everyone here is so creative, but there’s no pressure to perform. It’s not corporate, everyone’s working for themselves. Every studio you walk past, you peer through the windows and there’s a completely different setup for a completely different artist. It’s just exciting.
What do you think gives it that feeling?
It’s like that every aspect of the building is there to be used by the artist within it. Like this communal space, there’s always people dotted around quietly working. Then as you head up to each floor, it gets more messy and creative. It’s not like you have to protect the space, you can put your stamp on it.
Has it changed your perception of Penzance as a town?
Yeah, it totally has. This was just a car park before. And now it’s got such a lively building right in the middle of town. I’ve been introduced to so many people with awesome jobs. It’s like these people who worked from home in Cornwall now have a space, and now there’s a community.
What was your perception of Pixel as it was being built?
I was actually one of the locals who had a bad perception of it! There’s a lot of huge, amazing old buildings in Penzance that are falling apart. I think as a town, we’ve had some bad experiences when there’s months of scaffolding and supposedly for the community, but then they either get built and they’re inaccessible for the average person or they don’t get finished.
I think the assumption was that this place was going to be the same. And then when it was finished, it felt a bit intimidatingly fancy.
So what’s made it accessible and approachable—was it the people who work here?
Well, that was Richie’s goal with that video—to show people what it was like and that it was a space for us. He was so optimistic about it and had so many amazing ideas of what could happen here. Making that video was basically him talking about that, and it’s got like, ten times the views as the population of Penzance.
And what would you say to anybody interested in learning about the building?
If you’re local and you’re creative, then you’re part of the community. The community of artists already existed in Penzance. This place just gave them a home.
Brilliant, thanks, Ike. It sounds like that video’s just the start of big things ahead.
