Being seen, being heard

A UK-wide survey of informal sector moving image production opportunities for young people ages 5-25

Every year, an estimated 17,000 children and young people in the UK are involved in making films or videos. This is just one of the extraordinary facts uncovered in a new study undertaken by the BFI with the National Youth Agency.  David Parker, the Project Leader, writes about what the research team saw and heard ...

To obtain a copy of the report for £5 please contact:

National Youth Agency Sales

0116 242 7427

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National Youth Agency

The Audit

The research , which took just over a year to complete, looked at informal sector opportunities for 5-25-year-olds to make media.  The study makes it possible for the first time to gauge the extent and diversity of creative opportunities on offer to young film-makers. They may be making animations, trailers, documentaries or drama, and with the new movie-making software packages coming down in price, numbers of young people actively involved are rising. Particularly notable in this study were the many examples of work using moving image media to engage marginalized or disaffected learners. 

Who did we talk to?

This research has given us the opportunity to develop a database of over 300 organisations currently providing informal sector media production opportunities. Nearly 40% of these contributed to the survey by completing a comprehensive questionnaire that probed six aspects of each organisation:

• the organisations' mission statements, aims and staffing;  
• funding;
• levels and type of equipment and facilities;
• nature of the production opportunities offered;
• the users they are targeted at, and
• the networks that exist with other organisations.

Many individual practitioners were interviewed to establish their perspectives of the strengths, weaknesses and tensions within the sector. A number of organisations across the UK have also been visited and some of their young participants have been observed in action and have added their views.

A different practice?

The findings of the bfi's Being Seen, Being Heard research suggest that the informal sector is indeed providing a rich variety of creative opportunities using moving image media for young people.  Clearly, the methods used by facilitators in informal teaching and learning, especially where the students are in some way marginalised or disaffected, are radically different from the kinds of practice that predominate in schools or other centres of formal learning. The differences and similarities between them will be of increasing interest as schools are encouraged to form partnerships with informal sector education providers. In addition to this, thought will need to be given to models of learning progression that are rooted in research, or which at the very least are refined and adapted by teachers and facilitators in the field.

Currently, the bfi has created some suggestions around what teaching and learning might look like using the moving image contained in Moving Images in the Classroom (2000) - a free, downloadable resource (to order a print version by contacting bfi Education). Not all of the suggestions will be relevant to the informal sector, but the interplay between these suggested models and the kinds of innovative learning progression utilised by those practitioners using the media to train or engage youth will offer a more comprehensive insight into how the moving image might be used constructively across all education sectors in the UK.

The Big Picture

The overall picture is one of growth in this area of activity, as more and more informal sector educators begin to use media as a teaching and motivational tool.  Despite this growth, there are some causes for concern. Funding is a key issue that must be addressed. There is a clear need for it to be aimed more at encouraging sustainability rather than one-off projects. It is particularly important for young people to have second and third chances to make films so that they can develop their skills further. This is especially important with groups of learners in the informal sector who have been excluded from mainstream education. The final report makes a case for:

More strategic funding from the Film Council and other agencies;

• More links between formal and informal education;
• Stronger networks;
• More widespread exhibition of products;
• Better models of evaluation, accommodating the sector's diverse aims.