Battling over 21st century literacy
For this edition of PoV we have selected reports on six of the “pilot projects” funded by the UK Film Council’s (UKFC) initiative “Film: 21st Century Literacy”. Although this is a mouthful of a title, it does at least attempt to express the funders’ aspirations: to get film education more widely accepted as a key contribution to literacy. Many in MEA would be inclined to argue that “being literate” these days requires a repertoire of knowledge and competence across a number of media: film is obviously an important element (even more so if the term is taken to include other moving-image forms such as TV) but by no means the only one.
As we know, many people outside MEA don’t see it this way. Just campaigning for recognition of media education as a desirable “extra” in schools is hard enough; it’s a much more ambitious project to try and develop and lobby for a broader idea of literacy for everyone that includes learning about media other than books. Unfortunately, no UK agency – apart from grass-roots, minimally-funded organisations such as the MEA in England and AMES in Scotland – is in a position to take this on. The only organisation that might be expected to do this is Ofcom, which is required to promote “media literacy”. But Ofcom is a regulator, not an educational organisation, and its remit excludes four key media sectors – press, advertising, film and video games – so the version of media literacy that it presents is far from comprehensive.
And while Ofcom has been generous and helpful in some ways to media educators (it funded MEA’s Media Literacy Conference in 2010, for example) it has done very little to persuade the industries it does regulate to support the development of education for critical analysis of television and radio, or to focus internet education on issues other than child protection. Each of the four media sectors that Ofcom does not regulate have been left to make their own choices about whether they want to invest in their own bit of “media literacy”. Advertisers have done this to some extent with the Media Smart initiative, but film education is the only sector that has received substantial investment, to the tune of some £12 million annually.
It’s true that this distorts the development of media education in favour of film, but it would be churlish to object to funding that has clearly produced a wealth of activity: from the British Film Institute (BFI), Film Education, the regional and national screen agencies, and from many independent cinema venues around the UK. Nevertheless, at that level of investment, one would expect film education in the UK to be thriving at all levels of education, with a growing body of evidence about its effectiveness and value, and an increased readiness on the part of Government to accept the importance of moving image media in the curriculum for everyone. This is not entirely the case. A bit of back story is necessary here.
In 1998 the new Labour Government commissioned a report on film education, duly produced in 1999 under the title Making Movies Matter, by a BFI-led group comprising many of the active and informed film educators in the UK. Not only did both the UKFC and the BFI then completely fail to develop any of its recommendations; additionally both institutions persistently disregarded the need to ensure that the numerous stakeholders in the film education field might have something to gain from cooperating with one another under an agreed policy framework.
Under the UKFC’s eleven years of existence (2000 – 2011), numerous new bodies were created with remits that included some kind of responsibility for education; they were however free to evolve it in their own terms and in their own way, with no overarching strategy to guide them and no requirement to collaborate or even learn from the educational activities of existing bodies such as the BFI, Film Education, Skillset and the national screen agencies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. As a result, the nine new regional screen agencies and First Light Movies each established their own educational definitions and priorities, developed their own modes of working and, in pursuit of renewed annual funding, made large claims for their own successes. By 2008 these disparate projects were rendered even more problematic by the establishment of Film Club, a DVD loan service for schools supported with £11.4 million of taxpayers’ money over the three years to 2011!
But by 2005 the UKFC UKFC finally decided to turn its attention to education and decided to develop an education strategy. Four years of meetings and several expensive consultants later, “a strategy for film education across the UK” was produced under the title “Film: 21st Century Literacy” (FC21L), with a budget of £750,000 and a three-year lifespan in which to make the squabbling offspring of the UKFC and their older half-siblings start to look like what was hubristically termed ”the film family”.
It was never going to be likely that FC21L could achieve major changes in three years with that amount of money money and the unrealistic challenges that it set itself, and in any case the context soon changed dramatically. We are now structurally back where we were ten years ago, with the UKFC and most of the regional screen agencies disbanded, a new “Creative England” network just established, the BFI contemplating its promotion to a leadership role, and a plethora of public and independent bodies competing for revenue in a context of reduced school expenditure and vanishing continuing professional development for teachers (CPD). The only new fish in the pond is Film Club, enjoying a fourth year of high level grants, from the coalition government, the Cabinet Office and the BFI. We gather that Film Club will soon be publishing a review of their activities and we eagerly await their data on actual reach and effectiveness.
In this context, the modest but at least tangible outcomes of FC21L’s expenditure – the six reports from the projects it funded between 2008 and 2010 that we are publishing here – provide a welcome opportunity to see some real evidence about how film education can work, to recognise that it can and probably must take place in a number of different contexts, and to realise that a common agenda and strategic collaboration between those contexts might be a good idea.
Perhaps the most notable feature of the six reports is their institutional diversity: there’s a national screen agency, a regional archive, a local authority, an independent non-profit company, a subject association and a regional screen agency. Each of these types of institution has a track record in the development of education about film, and often other media as well, going back over many years. They have been the grass-roots of film education development for many years, typically scraping along from year to year with funding from one source or another, accepting the compromises that different funding sources impose, always limited by time-frames and by shifts in policy priorities, always seeking to tailor their efforts to the latest policy priority, making the best of the distortions that ensue, and yet through all this holding on to some sense of real, informed educational purpose.
Another important point to note is that in each case, these institutions managed to raise substantial amounts of match funding: this additionally demonstrates that the work done over the last 30 years and more has had some payoff: clearly some parts of the education system are now prepared to make their own investments in film education where these are of demonstrable value.
What we also see in these six reports is an attempt in each case to peep over the parapet to try and take a longer view, because FC21L demanded attention to transferability and sustainability. Each initiative is more than a one-off time-limited project: it demonstrates potential for long-term provision. Each initiative also brought together different agencies to collaborate, and tackled specific, well-known problems in developing and maintaining film education initiatives. In each case also, data-gathering and online publication of material have helped to give the initiative a public profile.
Five key features of these initiatives can be identified, that raise them all above run-of-the mill school or community projects:
- High quality CPD as a key factor in ensuring that teachers/leaders can maintain and develop film work themselves, rather than depend on visiting “experts”;
- Seeing film education as a long-term commitment embedded in the curriculum, rather than as a one-off project, after school treat or end-of-term extra;
- Building in opportunities to ensure that learners see and discuss films that they might not otherwise encounter;
- Recognising the value of local leadership to ensure long term sustainability;
- Reaching out to disadvantaged or previously non-participating schools and/or sectors.
At the same time however, it’s important to acknowledge that these initiatives all demonstrate at some points the continuing uncertainties and contradictions that film education needs to resolve. These are:
- There’s an essential difference between using film as a stimulus to other learning, and teaching film as a study object of value in its own right; many teachers are unclear about which they are really doing.
- A lack of integration between the three “Cs” of creative, cultural and critical work.
- A lack of attention to learning progression and insufficient interrogation of prior assumptions about “ages and stages”.
- A lack of data about assessment and comparability of achievement.
None of these is a new problem. They are familiar to many media educators, and we all know that they will take time and money to explore and resolve. So it would be unfair to raise objections, given the relatively limited finance available for the pilot projects. It will be welcome however, if the final verdict on FC21L is not one of uncritical self-celebration, but a sober recognition of what it was able to achieve and what it could have done if more money had been available. Essentially it has funded some initiatives that have each demonstrated, yet again, some of the things that can be done well in film education, while at the same time demonstrating the shortcomings that under-funding tends to create. No surprises there for some of us, but some important messages as well.
But where does this leave us? The BFI is committed to spending money in the future on the development of film education. But will it develop a coherent strategy itself before handing over large cheques? Will it be tough enough to face down the grandiose rhetoric that inevitably comes out of organisations that have to compete for funding, and ask for hard evidence about teaching and learning? Until now, we’ve had little or no opportunity to find out whether the millions that have been pushed in the direction of film education have been well spent. We certainly know that they have not served a coherent national policy. In many cases, we have no evidence to tell us whether this expenditure has met the needs of learners. In fact, we have little idea about what most of it is actually spent on! And in any case, media educators will want to ask whether it makes sense to spend all this taxpayers’ money on film education and next to nothing on education about other media. In the context of this summer’s tabloid scandals, others might be beginning to ask this too.
MEA speaks for teachers and learners. We have hardly any funding, but the corollary of that is that we do not have to toe the lines imposed by corporate or state sponsorship. The editors of this issue of PoV believe that, modest as these six reports are, they demonstrate the resourcefulness of professional educators in diverse contexts and should therefore be noted by those in a position to determine future policy. We believe that the following five principles should inform any policy for public investment in film education in the UK:
- Public finance for film education must be allocated on the basis of credible, independent evidence about sustainable benefits to learners.
- Public finance for film education must be allocated proportionately, taking into account not only the numbers of learners involved but also the depth, intensity and sustainability of the learning experiences offered.
- The budgets, policies and evaluation methods and data of film education organisations in receipt of public finance should be open to public scrutiny.
- Discussion of future film education policy must be open to all stakeholder organisations, not just those in the “leadership group” inherited by the BFI from the UKFC (ie BFI, Film Education, Film Club, First Light and Skillset).
- Film education should be seen as an integral part of media education: any structures or agencies whose role is to support or develop it should engage in joint advocacy with media educators.
If you agree with these principles, or indeed if you would like to suggest changes or additions, please comment below. We will ensure that the key points of this debate are forwarded to the BFI and to its funders at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Cary Bazalgette & Ian Wall
October 2011
