Bradford has
a rich heritage of moving image innovation and film making progress. An
indigenous film history which can be traced back to the first world war as well
as the countries National Media Museum have contributed to the city’s identity
and culture. In 2009, Bradford was awarded the world’s first UNESCO ‘City of
Film’ designation which recognised its past heritage and current engagement
with film. Currently, Bradford continues to improve its position in the
national film community by acting as locations for films such as The Kings Speech (Hooper, 2010)
and as the host to the Bradford Film
Festival and the Bradford Animation
Festival.
Bradford City
of Film operates under four strands: Enjoy, learn, make and visit. As part of
the bid for the designation, the original prospectus had promised ‘a range of
educational activities around film’ which were to go beyond the walls of the
National Media Museum and move into the schools of the city. Bradford had
previously been involved in educational schemes such as the Better Reading
Partnership which supported 1649 children and lead to a ‘significant gains in
the 10-week period’ (Brooks et al.,
1998, p. 18).
In 2010, a year after the start of the City of Film initiate, a group of local
experts gathered to design a scheme which would become the flagship education
program for ‘media literacy’.
Soon the
group received support from the British Film Institute as well as a blueprint
for film education run by the Lincolnshire county council. Funding was secured which was intended to
‘support boys’ literacy development’ and the focus group decided to hold a
series of in-school workshops with the help of the media specialist Philip Webb
and the equipment of the Innovation Centre, a company of ‘learning and teaching
consultants, learning technologists and media professionals’ (Innovation
Centres, 2014).
The scheme was scheduled to start with a one year pilot in September 2011.
Over the
course of a year, 15 primary school teachers were trained by the BFI to use
films in lessons, supporting literacy learning and development. These teachers
were then encouraged to support and teach other teachers. All primary schools
in the area had been invited to take part in the scheme, but it was felt that
15 would be a good number to keep track of progress and attainment. The project was designed to comprise of two
phases: first the teachers were to encourage the students to write after
watching films after which they would encourage film production with writing.
Unfortunately several of the consultants on the project were made redundant due
to cuts to the council’s budget and not all schools were able to complete phase
two. All schools documented their progress on a blog (Webb, 2014).
At the end of
the project teachers were interviewed about their experience on the literacy
scheme. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive and the benefits mentioned
included increase in enthusiasm, reading, empathy, interest, concentration,
processing and demonstrate information, appreciation of genres, imagination,
vocabulary, writing, motivation, attitude, engagement and team building skills.
Unfortunately, the project did not evaluate whether literacy attainment had
increased in terms of grades, however some quotes suggest that the students
enjoyed literacy much more after the projects. Only two teacher quotes actually
mentioned levels in their report: one teacher said that this students jumped a
whole level (1b-2b) and one other a quicker start to beginners (achievement of
1a and 1b).
‘Boys how do not engage in
reading are more engaged by film.’
‘Enthusiasm towards writing
greatly improved for the majority of the class.’
‘Visual stimuli has a positive
effect on students ability to process and demonstrate understanding of a
text.’
‘It was clear to see that more
children in Year 1 (age 5-6) were achieving levels 1a and 1b much quicker in
both reading and writing. Children were motivated to write. Children’s
imagination, vocabulary and own expectations of what can be achieved with
writing were all improved.’
‘At the beginning of the year
many boys were reluctant to write. […] With this project children,
particularly boys, were engaged and had good ideas during oral work.’
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Quotes from teachers on Year 1 of
the literacy scheme
The scheme
was judged as successful and funding was secured to continue it into a second
year. By the end of the summer, Yorkshire was amongst the regions praised for
being ‘positive and inspired’ by the ‘Making the Case for Film Education’
report (British Film
Institute, 2012, p. 2)
and it was decided to cement the success of the scheme by recruiting a PhD
student who would determined the actual increase in literacy attainment through
the use of film.
The official
first year of the Media Literacy scheme was outlined in a document written by
David Wilson at the end of the pilot project (Bradford City of
Film, 2011).
It suggested a three year program which focused on initial training in the
first year and then suggested how teachers might be able to cascade the program
to five other schools each following year until all Bradford primary schools
were reached by the program. The project ‘outcomes for the pupils would be to
focus on AF3 reading (improving interference and dedication)’ (Bradford City of
Film, 2011, p. 1)
which would then lead on to an increase in standards of writing. The documents
offered little information on how schools would be selected on what kind of
targets the students and teachers would be expected to meet. 16 schools were
anticipated to take part in the program. Much of the initial outline remains
very vague.
At the start
of September 2012, 12 teachers from nine schools were part of the scheme,
however none of the original schools had made the decision to continue and the
first week saw the drop-out of two of the teachers. However, the overall
reputation of the schools which took part was overwhelmingly positive. Only
three of participants came from schools which had received Ofsted ratings of
‘satisfactory’ or below. This year, the scheme was to focus on all students
(rather than just boys) and the consultants encouraged teachers to keep track
of the attainment data of six focus students. All classes on the scheme were in
Year 5 which allowed the teachers to focus on literacy improvements a year
before the primary Sats.
Two different
strands of the scheme began to emerge: Whilst the consultants and the BFI were
interested in training teachers to improve the children’s understanding of
film, the teachers and the council were involved in the project to raise
writing and reading levels. First discussions with the teachers suggested that
most were on the scheme to increase engagement and writing levels. Most focus
students had been chosen because they were reluctant writers and teachers were
hoping that audio visual stimulation would improve their attitude. When asked
about the definition of ‘film literacy’, most teachers were unable to name the
original meaning of the term (watching, analysing and making films) and instead
focused on the improvement of traditional literacy through film.
A first
analysis of the attainment in January 2013 suggested that some of the children
had made none or very little progress, however, according to the attainment
research of the consultants, this increased towards the end of the year.
End-of-project feedback turned out to be very positive once more, and the
Innovation Centre and City of Film planned a further year of the scheme. By the
summer of 2013, ‘raising attainment through the arts [was] more common’ (CapeUK, 2013) and it was the hope of the
scheme that the PhD research which was to take place the following year would
reflect and confirm the anecdotal evidence which had been provided so far.
This year (2013/2014), 24 classes have chosen to sign up to the project. The task of my PhD is to monitor the project (teachers as well as students) and produce some hard data about literacy development as well as qualitative research which illustrates the success of the scheme. All references can be found here.
