MOBILE MEDIA - LATEST NEWS
Students visit South Africa
A dozen girls from Greendown School recently visited students at Moriting Wa Thuto School, South Africa - and a filmmaker from Mobile Media at Create Studios accompanied them.
Gurchetan Singh offered his time free of charge after working with the Greendown students, teaching them video and documentary skills to record their amazing trip. Cathy Urquhart, teacher at Greendown, said, “We can't believe it's all come together from the initial, ‘wouldn't it be great if in an ideal world Gurch could come along’, to him actually supporting us on the trip.”
Funding for Gurch’s flight was sponsored by a bursary from Swindon Borough Council’s Create Studios and Mobile Media. Helen Miah, Head of Arts Services, said, “When I heard Gurch had the opportunity to go on the trip I wanted to make it happen."
Greendown received an award from The British Council to initiate this exchange project, which aims to:
- enhance and extend current work between the two schools
- enable mutual and reciprocal respect and understanding through acknowledging and celebrating cultural diversity
- and to encourage young people to see beyond stereotypes
This project is a pilot for a digital alliance and the Greendown students are now working on the final edits to the documentary, as well as a web page, through which both schools will be able to maintain regular contact.
Unique opportunity
Cristina Bennett, a Greendown teacher and Literacy and Global Partnership Coordinator, wrote:
"The work that Create have already invested in the film-making project has been an inspiration for the students at Greendown and at Moriting Wa Thuto. Using film as a way of reflecting on new experiences is something new to many students; to have this available to young people in two different parts of the world as they discover their similarities and differences is a special and unique opportunity, as what is captured is very real.
This reality, which will take us and the students beyond the stereotypes, is what will make this film perfect for other students to learn from too; we are hoping to use the film as a learning and teaching resource within both schools (Greendown and Moriting Wa Thuto), to enable young people to form images about others without too much reliance on the usual media images. By doing this we will also be helping young people explore where different media fit into their lives."