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 three wonderful Film Festivals this year in the Autumn, Spring and Summer 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!
In the summer term we hosted ten Every Child A Cinema Goer screenings, where we shared the Pixar classic, Inside Out. Each screening was followed by a 15 minute talkback session, in which we explored the topics of wellbeing and transition, as the Year 6 audience members prepare to move from primary into secondary school. Our big screens were busy, as we also welcomed children in for our Into Film screenings of the school year, showing Wallace and Gromit and Peter Rabbit.
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’ve had a wonderful year with our After School Club. For 2024-25, we worked with both Virginia Primary School, and Christchurch Primary School to deliver two film clubs. We explored a huge variety of filmmaking techniques and topics all connected to the theme ‘All About Me’.
We had an incredibly exciting summer term at our ASC, finishing with a surprise visit from new Save the Children ambassador Nicholas Hoult, fresh from the Superman press tour. In a special workshop with Save the Children and Warner Bros, both our groups watched exclusive clips from the film, took part in a lively Q&A with Nick, and shared their own wild and whacky creative ideas—catch the highlights on Instagram and in the Hollywood Reporter! Inspired by the upcoming surprise (for our pupils) visit, we themed the summer term around superheroes, with young people exploring their own unique superpowers—like kindness, creativity, and being a good friend. We wrapped up the term with a joyful sharing event for families, celebrating their work and strengthening our partnerships with local primaries Christchurch and Virginia. Our exhibition celebrating the work is on for another few weeks.
You can read more about it, or watch some of the films we’ve made on our After School Club blog.
Premiere Day
Finally, in July we welcomed 380 pupils from eight different schools to watch their own films on the big screen!
For the third year of Flip the Script (and our eighth year running film education programmes) pupils from eight schools created powerful, curriculum-linked films exploring themes like the Gunpowder Plot, the Matchgirls’ strike, and modern-day activism.
We celebrated their work with a special screening at Rich Mix, where students walked the red carpet and saw their films on the big screen – for some children, this is their first visit to Rich Mix, and for others, their first to any cinema. We followed the screenings with Q&A sessions, giving the children the chance to reflect on their creative process, and some took part in a digital takeover workshop with our marketing team, learning how to promote their work like true pros.
So, What’s Next?
Our exhibition celebrating the Flip the Script work is on for another few weeks. After that, we’re looking forward to meeting our advisory board to review and develop the programme, before we begin our programme again in September. We can’t wait to see what the next year holds for Flip the Script!
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
