FEATURE: CULTURAL EDUCATION
Shakespeare through a lens
inaugural Film Festival. It was a chance to see some of the most creative and moving scenes from the films which schools had been working on for several months, and to celebrate children’s resilience following a time of continued disruption due to the pandemic. Over the last 20 years, our annual Shakespeare
E
arlier this year, award-winning cultural education charity Coram Shakespeare
Schools Foundation (CSSF) held its first ever Film Festival, giving children across the country opportunity to learn new skills and bring Shakespeare to life through a bold new medium. In our first piece this month on cultural
education Francesca Ellis, Head of Creative and Programmes at CSSF, tells us more about the Festival and the impact of the charity’s wider work in schools.
Our first Film Festival On 2 December, a number of our patrons, including actors Hugh Dennis and Alfred Enoch, hosted an event to showcase the achievements of over a thousand children who participated in our
Schools Festival, the world’s largest youth drama festival, has seen 300,000 children and young people perform Shakespeare plays on professional stages. Over the last 18 months, the pandemic has disrupted children’s education and their interaction with friends, as well as limited access to the arts. Therefore we decided to develop the Film Festival, in partnership with leading film education charity Into Film, to give children and young people the opportunity to reconnect, to rebuild their confidence and to enable them to collaborate creatively with their peers. We worked with Into Film to run online
sessions for teachers, enabling them to run the project with confidence and empower their students. The Festival has offered children and young people the unique opportunity to gain creative technical skills in areas such as lighting, directing, editing and design to bring Shakespeare to life in an innovative new medium. Children from 60 primary, secondary and special schools nationwide took part in the project, producing their own high-quality abridged Shakespeare films. It has been wonderful to see and hear about
the exciting new possibilities that filmmaking opens up for schools, for example a SEND school
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setting Henry V in a boxing ring and a primary school's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' full of animated magic. It’s an opportunity for children to realise their potential, from the teenager who is a whizz with editing software and the primary student who gets to call the shots from the director’s chair. When their film is screened to the school, as well as to a national audience via our website, the sense of pride and resulting confidence boost is enormous. You can watch the films and see the ‘Best of
the Fest’ event at
shakespeareschoolsfilmfestival.org.
Return of the Shakespeare Schools Festival Our Shakespeare Schools Festival lies at the heart of our work, giving children and young people the confidence and skills they need to succeed in life. Every year, we work with thousands of pupils from every community, background and school type across the UK. Months of preparation culminate in exhilarating performance evenings in professional theatres nationwide; a night which can give confidence and self-esteem to last a lifetime. In 2019, more than 20,000 young people from
over 750 schools performed abridged Shakespeare plays in theatres across the UK. Over 40,000 proud parents, carers and friends watched young people exceed their own and others’ expectations. Due to the pandemic and the closure of
theatres, our work has been adapted throughout 2020 and 2021, but we are delighted that the
December 2021
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