Flip the Script provides children and teachers in schools with the tools to tell their stories through film. A free programme, it involves film screenings for schools in our cinema, in-school workshops culminating in pupils creating their own short films to watch at their premier on our big screens, after school film clubs and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) workshops for teachers.
Now in its eighth year, our film education programme has been the creative force behind more than 50 films created by local schoolchildren, full of weird, wacky and wonderful characters. Let’s delve into this year’s creations…
Film Screenings
In partnership with Into Film, we have had two wonderful Film Festivals this year in the Autumn and Spring Term.
In November we had an incredibly exciting, and quite frankly jam-packed four-day programme. We held seven screenings for our local primary school students, from Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse to Ozi: Voice Of The Forest, Robot Dreams, Migration and the always popular Michael Morpugo classic Kensuke’s Kingdom . We welcomed over 600 students alongside their wonderful teachers, and it is always a joy and pleasure to have such excitable smiling faces grace our cinema.
One of our most local schools, Virginia Primary School, who we’ve had the pleasure of working with for many years now, joined us for Kids In Museums Take Over Day with their Year 6 class. We ran three mini workshops with their students, exploring marketing for films, projection, and front of house to show them a little taste of what it’s like to work in the cinema! They created movie posters around the theme of ‘Me: The Movie’ and practiced interviewing each other. The young people were then shown the steps to project the footage they’d captured on the big screen – the very same they’d just seen Spider-Man on! Finally, they learnt how to sell and scan tickets, and welcome our visitors (each other)!
We also had the privilege of hosting a special selection of secondary school screenings, including Raging Grace, followed by a post film Q&A with the director Paris Zarcilla and editor Christopher CF Chow. It was an incredibly thought-provoking, engaging and insightful session, and we cannot thank Paris and Chris enough for their generosity of both time and knowledge they shared so openly. The students left feeling incredibly inspired and informed about making films!
In March, we held our second Into Film Festival, where we again welcomed over 600 smiling students to experience the joy of the big screen magic. With the return of some of our film favourites – Kubo and The Two Strings, Kensuke’s Kingdom and some massive new titles – The Wild Robot and Wilding, we invited the students to take part in our film review competition to discover their inner Kermode or Mayo. Their reviews did not disappoint, and the Creative Engagement team had a wonderful and unbelievably challenging time picking our winners. Check out a selection of the reviews below!
We’re now in the midst of planning for our final film screenings of the year (where has the time gone?): our Every Child A Cinema Goer Screenings. We can’t wait to welcome lots more wonderful children in the summer term!
Workshops, Workshops, Workshops! And some CPD…
We’ve also just completed the delivery of the final workshop from our in-school element of the programme, and are now starting the process of editing all the students’ and teachers’ hard work together. We have worked with six primary schools in Tower Hamlets and two in Hackney, reaching over 350 children across these schools to decolonise their curriculum topics and deepen their engagement through creative literacy and filmmaking. The schools all received five workshops in their class; an introductory session; a creative literacy session with our wonderful facilitators and poets Mr Gee and Naima; a filmmaking session with Helen from our Creative Engagement team; a production session to record their story; and lastly an editing workshop.
From exploring Bethnal Green Tube station’s little library during WW2, to the Ancient Egyptian God Anubis visiting the Isle of Dogs, to the positives and negatives of life, the children have stretched their creativity, worked together to communicate ideas, and ultimately make a fantastic array of films. We’re all very excited to celebrate their premier day in June.
CPD
Alongside this, we delivered CPD sessions for our teachers to enhance and develop their understanding of film in education. We began with an online session from the wonderful poet extraordinaire Mr Gee, exploring creative literacy and decolonising the curriculum, followed by curriculum-based filmmaking with Olivia from Into Film. We’re very grateful to all the teachers who got stuck in during both sessions, you could really see the outcome of this throughout the project – the children are lucky to have such wonderful teachers!
After School Club
Last but certainly not least, we have had a wonderful year so far with our After School Club. This year, we have been working with both Virginia Primary School, and Christchurch Primary School to deliver two film clubs. We have explored a huge variety of filmmaking techniques and topics all connected to the theme ‘All About Me’. You can read more about it, or watch some of the films we’ve made on our After School Club blog.
So, What’s Next?
We have one more term left of our After School Club, we have our premiere day for our in-school workshops, where the students get to walk the red carpet and watch themselves on the big screen, and lastly, one more film screening series. After a lovely and restful break, we’re raring to get going again!
If you are interested in learning more about our film education programme – please do feel free to get in touch our Schools and Film Education Coordinator, Helen Baldwin helen.baldwin@richmix.org.uk
