Local pupil wins national education award for her creativity in promoting the importance of copyright.

Be Creative

A student from Cottingham High School in Cottingham, East Yorkshire has been awarded as the winner in a national advertising competition. Emily Richardson, 17, won a £5,000 cheque for her school to put towards student resources and an iPad 3 for the best video entry in the Be©reative powered by ScreenThing national advertising challenge, which aimed to raise awareness of the importance of copyright and creativity.

With over 300 entries, the competition saw young people aged 11 to 19 from schools up and down the UK compete to create an inspirational original advertising campaign aimed at their peers. Students were set the challenge of bringing to life the value of the UK film, TV and video industry to show why it is important to choose official content over illegal downloads and streams.

The national competition, run by film charity Film Education in collaboration with film, TV and video industry body The Industry Trust for IP Awareness, gave young people the opportunity to showcase their creative talent while getting a unique glimpse of the dedication, hard work and relentless innovation that goes into making film and TV in the UK.

Emily’s winning video celebrated the value of choosing official film and TV by using clever and effective animation on post-it notes with a stop-motion effect whilst narrating the script to camera. Visually striking and engaging to watch, it successfully captured the attention of the viewer and made the audience smile at the simple genius of it. Another shortlisted student from the school also used animation to showcase the heightened emotions that a cinema experience gives to a viewer.

Liz Bales
Director General,
Industry Trust for IP Awareness

We’re thrilled to award Emily on this achievement. Copyright infringement is a real challenge to the film, TV and video industry, as it has a direct effect on the UK’s economy and jobs. Giving students a hands-on learning experience within the classroom where they themselves become the creators helps them appreciate the role of copyright in the film and TV industry, and enhances their understanding that copyright enables more of their much loved shows and films to be produced.

Emma Bull 
Film Education

This is the third year we have run Be©reative with the Industry Trust and we are continually impressed by the creative talents of the young people who take part. This year's competition was a tough one to judge with high calibre entries in both age categories, and all showing great creative skill. We're delighted to award Emily for her winning entry.

Michele Lister
Tutor, Cottingham High School

I have been involved with the BeCreative competition for a few years now; I feel it really focuses my BTEC Creative Media students on the issues that impact the industry they are preparing to enter. The students enjoyed the challenge of creating work with a message that will support and help to protect the film industry. As future filmmakers, they see it as their responsibility to encourage as many as they can to respect the work being done in this country.

Emily Richardson
Winning student

The purpose of my clip was to convey the hypnotic beauty and the social comfort of experiencing cinema as part of an audience, where everyone has their own way of enjoying it – none of the film on the screen is shown, leaving it to the imagination of the viewers. Creating such a short clip with drawn characters meant that I could be as creative with their personalities as I wanted to be, helping me to appreciate the many ways cinema is enjoyed.

Recent research from the British Film Institute shows a 202% increase in students enrolling in higher education film studies courses in 2010/11 compared to 2003/04, and a 48% increase in students entering GCSE media studies over the same period, demonstrating how film education is moving up the curriculum agenda, supported by programmes like Be©reative.

To find out more about the Be©reative powered by ScreenThing competition visit http://filmeducation.org/becreative

Cottingham High School winning video