Projects
Signals Media Arts Centre regularly works with organisations on media projects. In recent years we have worked many groups including; children of offenders, excluded students in pupil referral units, gifted and talented children, looked after young people and homeless adults.
Current Projects
From Dream to Screen is a First Light funded project that will make films with three groups in East Anglia. ‘Paper Dolls’ is a stop motion animation made by young people excluded from mainstream education from CSS Heybridge based at the Maldon Activity Centre. This film looks at issues surrounding self esteem and bullying. We are working with children from the Bangladeshi Support Centre in Ipswich to create a short film called ‘Our Ipswich’, looking at what it’s like to be young and Bengali in the Suffolk county town. The third film is called ‘Be A Little Boulder’ and will be made by children from Tendring Primary School. This film will be a stop motion animation set in the stone age with a number of whimsical characters including Clint the Flint, a tiny piece of rock. These films are in production now and are set to complete in July 2013.
This year we were fortunate in securing funding from the European Social Fund to run three 5 day media courses in Rowhedge, Tiptree and Jaywick with unemployed adults in community venues. This project teaches skills in basic computing, social networking, filmmaking, photography and web design. This project is being run by our experinced Community Crew team until the end of April 2013.
For more information see TCHC Community Grants page http://www.tchc.net/services/community-grants/applications
The Bounce Project is a creative collaboration between Signals Media Arts Centre and pupil referral units in Essex (PRUs). We will be working together for the next three years to provide young people at the centres with a range of filmmaking and media projects that boost skills, improve community cohesion and create an online network for centre staff to share information and best practice.
Signals was successful in securing funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Young Roots Scheme. We have been working with our own Youth Film Club for the last year on a cinematic documentary called ‘Turning Tides’ about the history of the Essex coast, with a particular emphasis on piers. This project involved interviewing members of the local community from Southend, Walton and Clacton about how the seaside and piers have been used, abused and enjoyed throughout the years. The group learned advanced filmmaking skills through producing time lapse sequences, editing with archive footage and shooting on Signals great range of DSLR cameras. Project partners include Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service and Southend Central Museum.
Past projects 2012
Signals have just finished working on their First Light Studio Award ‘ New Shoots’ project. This involved working with children and young people from the Perryfields Junior School, CSS Mile End (a pupil referral unit in Colchester) and young people with autism in Ipswich from the Allsortz Group. We are working with them to produce three films: ‘Time Report’ – a news-style film about Earth’s ecological problems, ‘Black & White’ – a film noir style detective story and ‘Big Top’ – a mixed media animation about the circus.
We are very pleased that ‘Time Report’ won the First Light Award for best film made by under 12s. Well deserved award for the young filmmakers at Perryfeilds.
Past Projects from 2011
Signals finished a short film called ‘Anticipation Animation’ working with the filmmaker Emma Curtis and pupils form Perry fields School in Chelmsford. This short animation captures the excitement of anticipation and will be shown at venues around Essex as part of the Sparks Will Fly events in 2012.
Signals worked on a project with the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to help local children create a film that captures and responds to the objects in the China Gallery.
Our biggest educational project took us all the way to China to work with ten students from the Gilberd School in Colchester.
During the February half term, year 9 students from the Gilberd School were taken on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to China as part of the Eastern Exchanges - Stories of the World project. This was arranged in partnership with Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service who have connections with the Nanjing Museum in China. The ten students were each asked to choose a priceless artifact from the collection at the Nanjing Museum before their trip, and Signals Media Arts Centre’s Education Co-ordinator, Lisa Wright, provided production training for the group and also accompanied the group to China to document the experience.
The group travelled from Beijing, to Nanjing to Shanghai in 8 days, visiting many famous places including Tianamen Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall of China and the Confucius Temple. The trip was an amazing experience involving sleeping in an overnight train, visiting a Chinese school, watching a classical opera and trying lots of weird and wonderful food! The final film is currently being post produced and the group are working hard on finishing their Arts Awards.
