We are an Erasmus+ KA2 project, started on 2015 with 3 year duration. Our SAFTAS project is innovative in so far as it aims at creating a Students Academy of Film and Theater Awards Festival where the students will be audience, film-makers, actors, directors, members of Jury and Masters of Ceremony. These different areas of work will contribute to developing key competences and transversal skills. Through them, our students will master reading, writing and listening skills. They will become experts and develop the ability to criticize constructively through exploring a domain in which they will become experts.
We strongly believe that thanks to drama and cinema our students will broaden their knowledge of their own culture and that of their partners. Indeed cinema and drama tell stories about the world : history, economics, but also explore human relationships. To become experts will enhance their self esteem and motivation, improve their expression skills in their mother tongue as well as foreign languages. It will also make them more familiar with new technologies as they will become proficient at filming, editing and showing films. For those of our students who are socially disadvantaged, this will give them a unique opportunity to discover the world of literature, drama and cinematography, through attending productions, festivals and become experts in an area they wouldn’t have access to if it wasn’t for school. The international aspect of the project will also be a unique opportunity for those students to have access to cultures they have never encountered and communicate in at least one foreign language.
As for the teachers, they will benefit from this project as they will have the opportunity to share teaching practises with their European counterparts. Working together with other teachers, and alongside the students, through collaborative workshops and meetings will provide the teachers with unique opportunities to develop a relationship of trust and mutual respect with their students as well as opportunities to share practises with their fellow teachers in a way that will enhance the quality of their teaching thus providing the students with better learning opportunities. The multicultural aspect of the project, working in English but being exposed to 6 different languages and sharing experiences with students and teachers from such diverse cultural backgrounds will bring to the learning experience a rare multicultural dimension.
The teachers will be thus able to create together teaching materials specifically designed for the project which will be used by all partners in the project, improved or adapted. All the teachers will have a chance to share their practises and improve them throughout the project.
Thanks to the project, the students will develop high profile skills which they can use to apply in higher education. The transversal and linguistic skills learned during the project will enrich their CV for future professional prospects. All students and teachers will have the opportunity to access the European certificates.
This will be true for all students in every school, regardless of their level of academic achievement as the SAFTAS project will provide a chance for every student to participate. High achievers and low achievers likewise will be given equal opportunities, as well as students with disabilities.
It is becoming increasingly important today to foster students’ motivation for school and secure key competences, and these issues are benchmarks for EU’s Education and Training 2020. Thus, all actors in education are in search for innovative methods in order to create a real incentive for school while improving reading and writing skills, the ability to communicate with others and self expression.
The SAFTAS project will try to address these issues through the creation a Students Academy of Film and Theater Festival. Four areas of work will be developped for this project and each school of the partnership will contribute in all areas : drama, cinema, being a host or a master of ceremony, and being a jury member. In each school the students will perform in the four areas, working together towards the shared end project. The SAFTAS competition at the end of the project will encourage them to produce their best possible work.
Exploring drama and cinema both as audience and as art-makers in the collaborative environment of the project will enhance all the students’ awareness of belonging in a greater European community and their responsibility and right of being active members of that community. It will strengthen bonds and develop a better understanding between young people from different nations, as well as create a real incentive for learning.
Through developing and shaping the skills connected with public speaking, directing and acting, and learning to develop argumentation through critical thinking, young people will find their own voice and add to their education unique skills that will help them in future. Working around cinematography will help our students better understand their world, and become experts at mastering the means of communication of their time.
In the SAFTAS theatre – cinema project every student will be ‘stageworthy’ and ‘filmworthy’ in a variety of posts these art-forms entail. The project will involve students who are either high or low academic achievers, potential early school-leavers, students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with disabilities, and implement the principles of equal opportunities, diversity and inclusion in the learning activities.
Many activities will be developped and carried out in English as the common language thus developing and enhancing their foreign language competence and performance in the particular context of theatre-cinema, bringing language learning to real life.
In theatre, Students will take part in Drama workshops, interview professionals, stage and perform famous plays, write scenes, learn about theatre in their countries and their partners’ countries. In cinema, students will study traditions in cinema, study the impact of cinema as an art, as an industry, study specific films, re-enact scenes, write subtitles, dub existing films, but also learn to create cinema, be actors, actresses (acting auditions), directors, technicians, producers and create an original production to compete at the SAFTAS. Film-making will help the participants improve their skills in ICT.
The students of the partner schools will become a “jury of experts” and learn about traditions in their own countries and in their partners’. Teachers will help them by providing appropriate materials to develop their knowledge of the arts so as to develop arguments. Students will write film reviews. All European partners will share their reviews and write specialist articles on a blog created for the partnership. They will attend festivals in order to organize themselves the SAFTAS Festival.
Finally the Students will learn to become a perfect master of ceremony. For each theater or cinema performance a host, specially trained for this specific skill will perform in their own way while presenting the awards, in several languages.
In addition to all this, Students will make sure that the promotion of the festival is carried out. They will create film posters, write articles and make sure the festival is a successful public event.
Finally the students will make news reports after each mobility or specific activity linked to the project in their own schools. For the festival, Students will invite a famous actor or director to be the President of the SAFTAS.
The transnational aspect of this project is essential as the final project is a European festival where selected students from each country will stage and show their production. In preparation, students from different countries will have learned together during the learning meetings and communicated in English as a global language throughout the project. Thanks to the project they will develop an understanding of other perspectives on the world than their own. They will understand that we are all different in some ways, and similar in lots of ways, that sharing a passion has no frontier, and that school can be the place for it.