The bfi and reminiscence work

bfi Education provides many opportunities for Lifelong Learning relating to film and television, including screenings and lectures, study days and longer running courses. Since 2001 bfi Education's Development Officer for Lifelong Learning, Marysia Lachowicz, has been initiating and running a series of reminiscence events for older people and setting up Classic Film Clubs around London. These are ideas that are now developing and expanding across the UK.

Classic Film Clubs

The main aims of such clubs are:

• To enable people aged over 60 to realise the potential of their personal memories and experiences of cinema going
• To nurture and broaden older people's interest and understanding of film culture

The clubs set up by the bfi, including ones at Age Exchange in Blackheath and The Ritzy in Brixton plus two in sheltered housing schemes, are proving very popular and are creating opportunities for older people to share their memories using their film and cinema experiences as triggers.

Each session, 'managed' by a reminiscence facilitator, includes a screening of a film, selected by the club members themselves, and a discussion, usually linked by tea and cakes. The facilitator will have been involved in training with the bfi and Age Exchange, to develop the skills needed to introduce the film and lead a discussion afterwards. They will also recognise the importance played by the tea and cakes! A tea break is a time for informal chat and, particularly straight after a film, is often where many opinions are aired and memories are triggered. The key is to harness that enthusiasm and responsiveness within the more directed reminiscence session that follows.

In the section Why Intergenerational Reminiscence Work?, we list Ten Good Reasons For Doing Reminiscence Work. In addition to these, the bfi aims (through the film clubs) to:

• Record and archive personal memories for future generations
• Encourage and inform lively debate about cinema going, past and present
• Encourage participation in discussion by creating friendly and secure environments
• Encourage intergenerational and cross-cultural dialogue
• Encourage an interest in/study of film culture

bfi Education and Intergenerational Film Reminiscence

Initially working with actors from the Museum of the Moving Image, bfi Education devised an interactive cinema-based project called Entertaining the Nation. This project used archive film and transported children back to the 1940s under the guidance of a cinema usherette and commissionaire (Museum Of Moving Image actors), who introduced them to aspects of life during and after the Second World War. Children considered rationing, evacuation and air-raids and took part in Cinema Club activities. Working in role gave them an insight into the cinema of the past and enhanced curriculum based historical learning, followed up in the classroom supported by written and visual materials from bfi Education.

In 2001, bfi Education ran an intergenerational film project with schools and a community centre in Knutsford, Cheshire. The project, which took place over half a term, began with the Entertaining the Nation interactive cinema session. The reminiscence session that followed, using further film material, plus historical artefacts as triggers, brought together two classes of Y5 pupils and around 50 older people.

Children interviewed the older people using questions that had been thought through beforehand, focusing on the adults' cinema-going experiences and what different aspects of life were like during and after the Second World War. The children had discussed the project with their teachers and prepared their questions with bfi Education staff. Some of the older people brought photographs, coins or household items, that they had kept for over 50 years, in with them.

The result was a session full of memories, sharing and genuine respect for other people's experiences. Some of the older people also followed up the project and continued their interactions with visits to the children's schools to carry on discussions.

Screen Dreams project

With the setting up of the Classic Film Clubs, bfi Education began to record personal testimonies about cinema-going. This has lead to an ongoing project, Screen Dreams, which aims to continue to record people's cinema-going memories from the 1920s to the present day. During autumn 2003, an oral history exhibition, Screen Dreams: Cinema-going in South London 1920-1960, was held at Age Exchange based on locally-recorded memories.

Screen Dreams in Southwark, London

Taking the Screen Dreams exhibition as a starting point, we aimed to provide a unique set of learning experiences which crossed generational divides. The schools' project related closely to the History and English National Curricula and offered opportunities for expressive and creative work in the classroom as well as a unique set of interactive experiences for teachers and pupils. The exhibition which included memories of working in and visiting cinemas in South East London included taped interviews and written testimonies combined with photographs and memorabilia to evoke strong memories of films, cinema going and life in London over the last 70years.

As the exhibition focused on South East London, the Screen Dreams schools' project was offered to local schools and was supported by North Southwark Education Action Zone. Four classes, from Y3-Y6, including both mainstream and special school pupils took part. Teachers involved committed themselves to training, preparation, classroom activities and evaluation, with a view to the materials and their experiences becoming part of the next phase of Screen Dreams as a UK-wide bfi resource for primary schools.

The project itself comprised:

• A training session for Age Exchange volunteers, introducing them to reminiscence activities and interview techniques which the children would be using as part of their visit to the exhibition. This gave the volunteers a chance to understand the context of the education work, to prepare themselves for interviews and to explore the kind of personal memories which they could share with the children.
• An INSET training session for teachers, introducing the project offering written and visual resource materials to prepare their children for visiting the Screen Dreams exhibition and link the project to curriculum based work.
• A half-day visit to the Screen Dreams exhibition, with an interactive session led by bfi Education staff and interviews with older volunteers focusing on their memories of cinemas and cinema-going before, during and after the Second World War.
• Work in schools, following up the class visits to Screen Dreams exhibition, including work on their own cinema reminiscence boxes and memories.
• A follow up visit from bfi Education staff to the schools, recording the children's experiences and thoughts on the project.
• A visit to the National Film Theatre on London's South Bank, for all pupils, parents and all volunteers who had taken part. The event took the form of a Saturday morning at the pictures, hosted by a volunteer in role as a cinema commissionaire and an actor in role as a 1940s cinema usherette. The morning began with a video compilation of interviews with the children and volunteers, after which the audience were treated to a selection of archive films, cartoons and extracts from favourites such as Flash Gordon and The Lone Ranger. There was a Film Star quiz and competition and children shared examples of the work they had done in school.
• An evaluation session for staff, volunteers and teachers aimed at concluding the project and establishing a plan for future developments.

Screen Dreams in Rugby, Warwickshire

Inspired by the success of the exhibition and taking on board feedback from the Southwark pilot intergenerational project, we re-edited the pack and developed a reminiscence box which we could take out to schools or older people's groups that contained a video of archive material, photographs of cinemas, film stars and film stills, film magazines, scrap books, cinema programmes, etc.

We were approached by Warwickshire Arts Zone to work on a project for KS2 pupils. The Arts Zone wanted to involve pupils in Y3-Y6 in three schools in the Benn area of Rugby on an integrated arts project involving film, dance and textiles using film as the common thread and inspiration for the whole project. This proved an excellent opportunity to re-pilot the Screen Dreams intergeneration project by working with the three primary schools and Age Concern, Rugby.

The project comprised:

• A series of film and reminiscence sessions at Age Concern, Rugby looking at various themes, including cinema-going, films and life during WW2, romance, and comedy; the dance and textile tutors also attended some of these sessions.
• Teachers from the schools joined one of these film and reminiscence sessions and then took part in a short Inset looking at the materials available, the curriculum links, and the potential outcomes; they also had the opportunity to meet all involved.
• Work in schools began after SATS and took place over the last half term of the school year. The children used elements of the pack to look at the cinema history of Rugby, visited some of the sites of the cinemas, drew maps, painted pictures of the cinemas then and now, wrote poems, talked about which stars they'd like to interview and practiced their interview skills in preparation for the volunteers' visits.
• Volunteers from Age Concern then visited each school to be interviewed by the children. They were impressed with the knowledge, enthusiasm and respect of the children.
• As with the Southwark project, an opportunity to present the work was given at Warwick Arts Centre. Again set up as a Saturday matinee, the children's presentations to other schools, Age Concern members, friends and families, were interspersed with archive film materials and quizzes. The work produced ranged from the production of a silent movie, a powerpoint presentation on the history of cinemas in Rugby, to the display of artwork and poems based on the children's discoveries.
• The textile project resulted in a tapestry map of the local area incorporating actual and imagined amenities.
• Classes involved in the dance project performed their dances inspired by films as diverse as horror movies, West Side Story, Singing in the Rain and the lavish dance sequences of the 1930s Busby Berkeley musicals.
• Teachers, children and volunteers were all asked to give their feedback on the project. Some of the Age Concern members who didn't take part in the schools' project but attended the presentations, expressed regret at not feeling more confident to have taken part themselves. Those volunteers who did, are looking forward to the next project and would be willing to help train other older people to be involved with local schools projects.
• The teachers saw many learning benefits, such as increased confidence, interviewing technique, speaking and listening, positive contact with older generations, cross-generational understanding, team working and having fun. They also felt the materials supplied not only supported History and English curricula but also linked to Music and ICT.

Where next?

These projects have proved very successful and the response from pupils, teachers and volunteers has been extremely positive, with the children commenting largely on how much they had enjoyed interviewing the older people, listening to their stories and seeing work from the other local schools. The volunteers were surprised at the in depth nature of the interviews, the children's level of interest in their memories and the diverse ways in which these were used and interpreted within the curricula.

We hope that teachers will make use of this material contained in this pack and whether they choose to work with families and friends or contact a local older people's group, we are confident that all involved will find it a rewarding experience.

Funding is now required to take us on to the next stage, which is the production of a DVD package of materials, including archive film footage and visual materials for use in the classroom and with older groups which will complement the ideas in this pack and be a published resource for schools, linked to film clubs and reminiscence groups across the UK.