There are just four weeks left to book your free place at this year’s Scottish Learning Festival and a quick search under Creativity shows you there is plenty of innovation and inspiration to take advantage of.

There are 25 seminars and 1 keynote speaker who make direct use of creativity in their work.

Sir John Jones has a reputation for straight talking, leadership and creativity and in his keynote entitled The Future Is Not What It Was he will argue that ‘Unless we are prepared to embrace change and champion innovation and creativity we may miss a huge opportunity to help create a world in which every child really does matter and none is left behind.’

You can register for SLF 2011 at the SLF website.

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival is a spectacular celebration of the art
of the moving image, and the largest film festival in the North East and
Scottish Borders, located in the border town of Berwick upon Tweed.

The Festival is set to return for a 7th time, Friday 23 ¬- Sunday 25
September 2011, spilling out of the Maltings Theatre and into various unique
architectural locations across the town during one action-packed weekend.

The Festival is now seeking submissions of short films and moving image
works made by young people under 19 to compete for the Chris Anderson Award
and a cash prize. The winning film will also be screened at the Leeds Young
People’s Film Festival ¬ one of the biggest film festivals in the UK for
young people. This competition commemorates the life of Chris Anderson who
was an active supporter of both the Festival and young filmmaking.

The Chris Anderson Award was launched in 2007 to encourage young people
involved in filmmaking and to identify promising new talent across the North
East and Scottish Borders. The award offers a cash prize which has kindly
been donated by the family of Chris Anderson – his widow Chrissie Anderson,
and his son Paul WS Anderson, director of Resident Evil and Alien Vs
Predator.

Selected films for the competition will be screened at The Maltings Theatre
on Saturday 24th September.

A young programming committee from the Festival Film Club at Berwick Youth
Project will select the programme of films that make up the final
competition programme.

“It was great to get selected for and win the Chris Anderson Award and have it screened at Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival. It made me and my friends feel very proud.” Chelsea Feeney (age 18) Beacon Hill Film Project, ‘The Pirate and the Mermaid’ Winning film 2010

“Getting a special mention was cool, it was great to have so many people enjoy my film” Abby Thomson (9) Director of ‘How to Make Friends’ Jury Special Mention 2010
For submission guidelines and entry form go to http://berwickfilm-artsfest.com/chris-anderson-award
Deadline for submissions is Friday 26th August 2011

This new project, which will run for four years, is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and runs in collaboration with the Scottish Screen Archive (part of the National Library of Scotland).

A major aspect of the project is to locate amateur video makers active between 1980-2000 and preserve and store some of the videos made during this period. The academic research team, based at the University of Glasgow, will investigate this video material to gain a unique insight into the lives of Scottish children in the twentieth century.

What kinds of video are we looking for?

It is our ambition to view material from a wide demographic of filmmakers (such as ethnic minority groups and different class backgrounds) and from a range of different locations across Scotland (the big cities, rural towns, the Highlands and Islands). The films /videos need not focus on children exclusively: the incidental appearance of children may be just as significant to our research. Please note: by ‘children’, a rule of thumb would be up to school leaving age (around 16).

Material we are hoping to discover:
Community videos produced between 1980 – 2000
Films/videos produced for educational projects, civic initiatives, promotional films for charities, possibly medical/public health films, and films/videos about/made in schools
Work produced by cine and video clubs, originally often screened for limited public exhibition (both fiction or non-fiction)
Films/videos produced by other kinds of community projects, such as drama groups
Work produced by children and others for children’s film festivals, or other public screenings

Material we are not looking for:
Home movies (i.e. films made privately by families) will be a marginal aspect of our research. If the films are unusual in either style or subject matter then we may be interested, but this kind of film will not be one of our main priorities