Apart from being an educator I come from a background in film and theatre. Teenagers today spend a majority of their day watching content on screens. After a decade of keeping these two worlds separate, I realised I was being stupid. The future of learning is audio-visual, and there's nothing more useful to teach kids going into the future than to tell stories. It will never go out of fashion.
We teach teenagers storytelling using video creation as a medium.
What this typically means is that on the one hand we teach students the basics of good communication - what is insight, how do you find a story to tell, why do stories matter- and then we teach them how to tell stories well. By first narrating it, and writing it down, or saying it aloud. And then by transferring that to a visual medium through the use of a camera, sound design and video editing.
Our progams are multi-faceted, and have a range of touch points. Our most immersive program, (called the Academy), is a two-year long immersive curriculum. Our shorter programs (called the Workshops) are a short but intensive deep-dive into the world of film-making. Students typically make a video inside a 90 minute session, which gives them a taste of what creating content could mean if it was done in a thoughtful manner
Our pilot project was a mini series titled Ready Steady that was co-created by a group of teenagers. After premiering at the Nehru Centre in London, we have held over 50 screenings in different parts of the country and more than 200 online screenings. We have been touring the country with our workshops, at schools including St Paul's Darjeeling and Riverside Ahmedabad. Our Academy programs are going on ground in two Indian cities.
Get in touch with us through our website! If you have a space, and access to teenagers, we'd be more than willing to get on ground and get it running.
