Film Education Pilot

Screen Yorkshire is working to develop media and film education and media literacy in line with the strategies laid out in the recently published UK Wide Film Education Strategy Film: 21st Century Literacy.

We are delivering a Film Education Pilot which will build capacity and support the ongoing use of regional archive footage. The project supports the National Curriculum at Primary and Secondary level though the creation of online resources, tested and developed by active partnership working with teachers and pupils, Screen Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Film Archive. Educators from a variety of settings will also be invited to attend the training and make use of archive film in array of educational settings, such as museums and in home education.

Project Launch Event
If you would like to find out more about the project, please join us at the Project Launch Event at the Showroom in Sheffield on 16th September at 6pm. For full details and to book a place, click here.

Project Objectives
A 12 month pilot scheme, run by Yorkshire Film Archive in partnership with Sheffield Local Education Authority (LEA), up to 12 participating schools ( 360 pupils ) and the Showroom, Sheffield will:

· Deliver training workshops for teachers
· Provide teachers with archive film resources for classroom use
· Support teachers in broadening use of archive footage
· Enable ongoing evaluation from all partners - teachers/pupils/Screen Yorkshire/Yorkshire Film Archive
· Create model online teaching resource and professional development that would be replicable across LEA's
· Bring participating teachers, pupils, families together through final event as part of Showcomotion Film Festival
· Encourage schools and families to engage with Showroom Cinema

Project Background
The project comprises training of teaching practitioners with the development of digital access to film archive material that supports the National Curriculum, and is supported by Yorkshire Film Archive through its Heritage Lottery Funded "Yorkshire Film Archive Online" project, currently under development.

YFA Online will include a ‘Learning' resource for National Curriculum teachers. The Learning resource will include archive footage with background information and suggested teaching activities alongside a guide to using film within the National Curriculum and will be interactive to include teachers' suggestions and work produced by pupils. The Film Education Strategy pilot project will work towards building content for the online resource, informed by the evaluation and feedback gleaned from both teachers and pupils and offer an opportunity for participating schools to showcase their work.

Project Outline
Yorkshire Film Archive will run a series of professional development workshops for two networks of teachers, one Primary and one Secondary, from a range of schools across Sheffield in which they will engage with local archive film footage, learn practical skills of film literacy, share expertise and be involved in the development and creation of long term teaching resources. The workshops will take place across the school year, providing opportunities for evaluation and sharing of ideas and the project will incorporate observation of related sessions within schools in order to evaluate and ascertain best practice.

Yorkshire Film Archive and the Showroom cinema will offer a day-long workshop for each network of teachers. In the first teachers will be provided with encoded archive footage relevant to the Curriculum, via YFA Online, for use as a flexible and potentially creative learning resource. The workshop will cover film literacy skills in terms of understanding, analysing and interpreting systems of meaning from archive footage. It will also engage teachers with examples of appropriate learning strategies and provide a forum for discussion around the application of the footage to enable teachers to share ideas, expertise and highlight any issues or barriers in using the material to enable effective development of the classroom sessions.

Through the course of the school year, teachers will be tasked with using the film available on YFA Online in the classroom to engage pupils critically and creatively with a locally significant cultural, social and historical resource. Yorkshire Film Archive will support teachers throughout the duration of the project by acting in an advisory capacity and providing additional resources such as background information and teaching techniques where required. YFA Education staff will observe teaching sessions to gain feedback from pupils and teachers and complete formative evaluation to enable the project to develop in response to the classroom situation.

The second workshop will comprise a plenary and evaluation of the use of archive film in supporting National Curriculum and of the project as a whole. It will also function as a means for teachers, Yorkshire Film Archive and Showroom education practitioners to share ideas and expertise and to discuss examples of work. Feedback from teachers and pupils will enable Yorkshire Film Archive to develop structured recommendations for future practice.

The final evaluation will be carried out based on both formative and summative evaluations from teachers and pupils, as well as evaluation by Yorkshire Film Archive, Showroom Cinema and Screen Yorkshire to ensure a complete picture of the project's outcomes and the extent to which objectives were met.

Outputs
· The workshops will engage up to 12 teachers from a range of schools across South Yorkshire, sourced via the LEAs. Assuming 30 pupils per class, this potentially reaches 360 pupils over the academic year and ensures a wide range of feedback from both teachers and pupils.
· By using the Showroom as the host venue, the scheme will create new opportunities for further audience/education development
· The pilot will create increased access to digitised material, available online, that supports the National Curriculum
· The creation of the online resource will provide a replicable model for future Regional Screen Agency/Regional Film Archive/LEA partnerships


The Film: 21st Century Literacy Strategy has been created through a collaboration between the five National Organisations; Skillset, the BFI, Film Education, First Light Movies and FILMCLUB. In addition to the huge amount of film focused activity across these organisations the Strategy will also produce a set of core pilots (including the one in Yorkshire) during the course of its three year span.