The Art & Design and Film & Media Saturday Clubs are part of the National Saturday Club initiative which aims to encourage young people to learn new skills, discover talents, meet new people, and find out more about further education, higher education and rewarding careers. The UCL East Saturday Clubs are free and open to young people in Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Newham.
The Art & Design Saturday Club, which is open to East London Students in Year 9 -11, is organised in collaboration with the Slade School of Fine Art, The Bartlett School of Architecture and UCL Special Collections. Meeting weekly over the next two terms, students will experiment with a range of techniques and media, learn about illustration and drawing using reference pieces from UCL Special Collections, and find out about architecture, design and planning. The Club will be predominantly based in the Slade Studio, the purpose-built art studio in the newly opened One Pool Street building at UCL East.
The Film & Media Club which launched in September, is open to Year 9 and 10. Using cutting edge software and quality equipment, students are developing practical and technical skills from production and sound design, to VFX and animation. This term has seen students work with East London Arts and Music tutors Brittany Sutcliffe and Fiona Moore, along with award-winning Hackney-born filmmaker Ashton John.
The Film & Media Club members have been working on how to connect with an audience and tell a story by creating short films about their own identity. In a special end of term event these films were premiered at the Pool Street cinema, the cinema based at the new UCL East campus. Along with members’ families and friends, the event was attended by Professor Michael Stewart (Professor of Anthropology and founder of Open City Documentary Festival), Dr Sara Hawley (Lecturer in Media & Digital Media), Richard Palmer (Employer Engagement Co-ordinator, Media BA) and Emma Bull (Senior Schools Engagement Officer, UCL East) who discussed the importance of the UK’s creative industries, and pathways into the sector.
Fiona Moore, tutor at East London Arts and Music said:
I have really enjoyed watching these young filmmakers grow in confidence as they develop ideas and grasp a fundamental understanding of filmmaking. The programme has allowed them to come out of their comfort zone and look inwards exploring what’s important to them and putting that into a film format. Programmes like this are important because they are developing not only technical skills but the soft skills needed to take them forward in the creative industries.
In November both Saturday Clubs attended the National Saturday Club’s London Visit which included workshops hosted at Central Saint Martins where they heard from guest speakers and took part in confidence-building activities, as well as visiting the Photographers Gallery.
Both clubs will be taking part in the National Saturday Club Summer Show in June to showcase their work.
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