HGFF will give a platform to future interested schools in the international community to learn from the outcomes of Inspiring Pupils and be a sustainable resource to build educational capacity through film making and digital literacy. Young people will continue to learn from Inspiring Pupils through embedding the model devised in the annual HGFF film festival through a specific pupil film screening and will focus on the continued development of young people’s creativity, critical thinking and digital literacy begun through their engagement in this project.
In particular HGFF will offer future screenings of selected films from the project to inform and motivate other schools to engage in bringing film making into the classroom and host their own film screening event.
Capacity building in young people and teachers took the form of skills development and professional learning enhanced through working with HGFF as project partners.
This was primarily through the input from Eirene Houston, (an award-winning screenwriter of 25 years’ experience in film and television) also participating as the Director of HGFF working directly with schools in Glasgow.
HGFF also offered the expertise of Amparo Fortuny, an experienced and award-winning editor and documentary maker. This professional development was invaluable. It was an excitement for young people to work with professionals from the world of film, television and documentaries.
Teachers working with the HGFF team were given the professional opportunity to gain knowledge and skill in understanding the significance of introducing young people in classes to the importance of story and following through the complex elements of film making, to ensure dialogue with learners and engage their interest and commitment to the process through active learning in order that learners had ownership of their creative outputs.
This added an additional dimension to skills development from those learned in the relevant Scottish curriculum experiences and outcomes in digital literacy. Testimony to the enhanced skills in film making gained through professional input from HGFF was during the screened festivals in each partner country where the pride the young people had in what they had achieved was obvious as was their confidence in presenting their films and their demonstration of an enhanced knowledge of the film making process to their audiences. This was remarkable to see. A quote from one of the participating pupils from a Glasgow school summed up the significance of their engagement in Inspiring Pupils:
“It is about growing together” and ” the thing that I think is most important is working together as a team because we can’t be left, can we?”
