We live in a world of moving images. So literacy in the 21st century means being as confident with the moving image as the printed word. That means that, just as children are helped to learn to read and write, they should be helped to enjoy and understand the moving image too.
Although the UK has many fantastic film education schemes, until now they have operated in isolation. To be truly effective, film education needs to be co-ordinated – and now, with the national Film Education Strategy, Film: 21st Century Literacy, the organisations that lead film education in Britain are joining forces in a project that we hope will eventually become central to every young person’s life.
The new Film Education Strategy plans to make sure children and young people across the UK have the chance to watch, understand, and to make films.
Many people are rightly concerned about the lack of high-quality films available for children. We believe the answer is helping to nurture an audience of bold and knowledgeable film-lovers. Ultimately, the strategy wants to see the UK’s children and young people becoming the guardians of tomorrow’s British film culture - one that helps lead the world.
Through helping children engage with a diverse range of films and building their knowledge of film-making, the strategy will encourage all types of learning, understanding and debate – and enable young people to use film as a vehicle for their own creativity.
What is the strategy going to do?
Part of the Film Education Strategy’s approach includes building on new government initiatives that are already underway, and the work of the organisations already involved in film education.
The Film Education Strategy is also introducing a range of new innovative approaches to film education. These include programmes to make sure children and young people can watch a wider range of films, and developing online learning to introduce young people to both the UK’s wonderful film archives and great new British movies.
The Film Education Strategy also intends to regularly campaign to remind employers, the film industry, policy makers, broadcasters, schools, colleges and the public that film education matters.
What are the aims of the strategy?As the Film Education Strategy begins, it has five specific goals. These include:
- Working with teachers and all those involved in film education to raise its standards and quality
- Developing online resources to give children and young people access to the UK’s amazing film archives
- Creating online resources for every appropriate British film funded by public resources
- Building a UK-wide network of school-based film clubs
- Piloting a new kind of partnership between the worlds of film and education at regional and national levels, to be rolled out across the whole of the UK
Ultimately, these five goals are all designed to work towards just one: making sure that film education in Britain gives children and young people the chance to watch, appreciate, and – if they want to – make movies, so that they can each share in the richness and creative possibilities of film.
For more information and to read the Film Education Strategy visit
www.21stcenturyliteracy.org.uk