ABOUT THE FILM

About Janice Kirkpatrick

Janice Kirkpatrick is a celebrated Scottish designer, activist and graduate of the famed Glasgow School of Art. As well as running her own design company with her husband, architect Ross Hunter, she curates exhibitions, writes and lectures.

Yet Janice also describes herself as a “big kid.” She loves motorcycles. “The power is remarkable.” But her first love has always been horsepower of another sort.

“When I was seven I started proper riding lessons [and] I became hooked,” says Janice.  “When I went to Glasgow School of Art I was 18 and the awful thing was I had to sell my horse because no else in the family rode. It scarred me very deeply.”

So, after decades of living in Glasgow, she and Ross decide to swap their lives in the city for a farm on the Scottish coast so they can raise Clydesdales.

But when Janice goes to buy a black Clydesdale, she can’t find one in the U.K. To her horror she discovers that the horse that powered the agricultural and industrial revolutions is in danger of dying out setting her on a quest to change the destiny of this iconic breed

About the Clydesdale Horse

It took a century for the Scottish to breed the Clydesdale into a workhorse so perfect it changed the course of history. In 1911 one highly prized stallion sold for the equivalent today of one million pounds (2 million Canadian dollars) – a record that is still unbroken.

Clydesdale horses were so valuable thousands were exported from Scotland to countries around the world including Australia, Russia, the United States and Canada. These extraordinary horses drove the agricultural and industrial revolutions, fought in the First World War and influenced the design of horse-powered machinery and vehicles.

In the United States they became famous as the Budweiser horses. In Canada they helped open up the Prairies and in the United Kingdom they became a royal horse.