An on-the-road film screening and community advice facility is calling on members of the public to help secure the project’s future by voting in a National Lottery funding scheme.

Moving-Pictures is a community group based in Halstead which specialises in showing films and offering life and support advice in rural and unusual locations.

The group is now campaigning to secure funding to set up a Community Caravan as a mobile cinema, with on-board tea and coffee facilities, to get people together and help battle loneliness and isolation in rural areas.

Mercedes de Dunewic, chair of Moving-Pictures since its inception in 2011, said: “We have shown films in tents and at dog shows and even in a church. “We’ve been everywhere, you name it we’ve done it.”

Moving-Pictures is one of five projects in East Anglia competing for £50,000 of National Lottery funding through the People’s Projects competition.

The Big Lottery Fund, ITV and The National Lottery have teamed up to give the UK public the chance to decide how £3 million of National Lottery funding will make a difference in their local area. The three projects with the most public votes will receive grants of up to £50,000 to help them develop their work.

Community Caravan aims to provide film shows that service communities where there are either financial, medical or transport constraints that prevent access to mainline cinema.

Although Moving-Pictures started out as a film showing facility, volunteers quickly realised people were coming to them for advice.

Mercedes added: “We had so many people who came up to us with questions or problems and we said, ‘If we can’t help you we will find someone who will’.

“Loneliness is a social disease. Living in a village is lovely but it can be lonely sometimes.”

If it succeeds in securing funding, Moving-Pictures plans to take mobile cinema equipment, extra folding chairs and tables and set up the caravan as a one stop drop-in centre, where people can watch a film, have a cuppa and a cake and get to know their neighbours. There would also be an adviser on board and plenty of information on a range of topics.

Mercedes said: “It’s time to start cherishing the lonesome.”

Voting for the People’s Projects closes on Monday (April 2). To vote, visit: www.thepeoplesprojects.org.uk