Andrew Burn
In this season of media excitement about the BAFTAs and Oscars, it seems reasonable for educators to ask where the next generation of film-makers might come from. Recent government policy in Arts education has certainly begun to take note of the value of film-making for young people, prodded by specialist institutions, in particular the British Film Institute (BFI). The lottery-funded Into Film programme provides opportunities for young people to watch and make films.
Nevertheless, when it comes to the school curriculum, film education and media education are pretty well invisible. They are certainly ranked lower than Art and Music, which are National Curriculum subjects, and even Dance and Drama, embedded respectively within PE and English.
These are topics I address in my inaugural professorial lecture, about to be published by UCL IOE Press. Entitled In Defence of the Media Arts: Screen Education in the Twenty-First Century, it argues that politicians and educators need to take media arts education (more…)