In 2012, the British Film Institute (BFI) launched a new education initiative, incorporated within the organisation’s strategic development plan, Film Forever: Supporting UK Film (British Film Institute 2012b). The initiative was published after consultation with a wide cross-section of organisations and individuals across the UK involved in moving image media education and comprises a three-tiered approach. The first tier is an online platform hosting moving image material and accompanying resources to support teaching and learning for young people aged 5–19. The second tier is a UK-wide programme of film education activities, including Continuing Professional Development (CPD), co-ordinated by the BFI’s delivery partner, Into Film. The third tier is a programme of Youth Film Academies designed to teach practical filmmaking (British Film Institute 2012a). The Academy is aimed at young people aged 16–19 and in 2013 the Department for Education (DfE) committed to supporting the programme with investment of £1 million per year over three years. The scheme involves working with a large number of delivery partners with a broad and strategic reach into education and a range of funding partners to support the work. These include the Welsh Government, the Northern Ireland Government’s Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, the Isle of Man Government as well as the BFI itself, the Film Agency for Wales and Northern Ireland Screen (Film Nation UK 2013). The scope of the programme and involvement of established delivery as well as funding partners represents an exciting and innovative new initiative in the BFI’s history. However, one of the central aims of this current education offer—to make the case to the UK governments for film education to be embedded within the curriculum—echoes the strategic aims of film education initiatives that stretch back over many years.

The Film Appreciation Department of the British Film Institute was established in 1950, further discussion of which can be found in Chap. 3. Although this department incorporated educational activity such as conferences and summer schools, the BFI’s work in developing resources for the classroom began in earnest with the appointment of Cary Bazalgette in 1979 (Bazalgette 2010). The introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988 provided an opportunity for the BFI to make the case for the relevance of film/media to education. After issuing a statement to, amongst others, the Government’s working party for English, the case that film and television should receive some critical attention within schools received support from the Secretary of State for Education (Bazalgette 2010). However, the impact of this support was in no way definitive and media education practitioners felt the need to continue their advocacy throughout the 1990s. This advocacy involved disparate arguments: that media education was an adjunct to English; that media education can protect children from ‘harmful effects’; that film education offered an avenue for creative practice. The contradictory rhetoric created by the advocates of these positions resulted in few advances and little recognition within the Government’s formal education agenda (Bazalgette 2010). Nevertheless, the BFI, and others, made significant progress in terms of reaching schools, developing film/media resources for the classroom and building support and networks for teachers and media/education practitioners. However, the central issue of achieving Government recognition of the role of moving image media in education outside of the established Film and Media Studies GCSE and A Level curricula was still unresolved.

In 1999, the BFI publication Making Movies Matter, a report from the Film Education Working Group, called for recognition of creative and critical moving image skills as an essential part of literacy in the twenty-first century (British Film Institute 1999). This report can be seen as marking the start of renewed efforts to establish a formal relationship between moving image media and the curriculum. There were to be many further attempts to achieve this aim following in its wake. The Charter for Media Literacy, published in 2005, aimed to raise awareness of, and advocate for, ‘media literacy’, defined as access to, understanding of and the ability to communicate creatively through digital technologies (Media Literacy Task Force 2005). The Media Literacy Task Force was set up with the support of Tessa Jowell MP, then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in the Labour Government. By July 2009, the Charter had received 211 organisational and individual signatories expressing support and been adopted in 19 additional countries outside of the UK. The Charter advocated for ‘critical understanding’ of moving image media that would inform creative production and be informed by access to a greater diversity of media content (Media Literacy Task Force 2005). While functioning as more of a manifesto than rigid guidelines for practitioners, the Charter demonstrated the level of support for ‘media literacy’ and highlighted the potential educational and wider social benefits of a critical understanding of media texts.

A few years later, Scottish Screen commissioned research into the concept and ‘benefits’ of media literacy. The summary report, entitled Impacts of Moving Image Education (Bazalgette 2009), further explored the range of terms used to describe practice. Terminologies circulating amongst practitioners, such as ‘media education’, ‘moving image education’ and ‘moving image media literacy’, were each found to carry distinct but overlapping definitions, the educational outcomes of which could be encompassed by the term ‘media literacy’ as defined by the Charter in 2005. The report’s author, Cary Bazalgette, argued that despite broad agreement on the definition of media literacy, practice differed according to levels of confidence, training, and resources, as well as organisational priorities, national contexts and educational philosophies (Bazalgette 2009). Bazalgette also argued that evidence was needed to demonstrate the benefits of ‘moving image education’, her preferred term, and that the Scottish Screen research functioned as the initial stage of identifying gaps in the available evidence and making recommendations for how these might be redressed (Bazalgette 2009). This call for evidence had in fact been preceded just a year before by the recommendations outlined in Moving Literacy On (Marsh and Bearne 2008), an evaluation of the BFI’s Lead Practitioner Scheme, which aimed to establish expertise in media literacy across all Local Authorities in England. Marsh and Bearne (2008) argued for the inclusion of media literacy within mainstream literacy education in parallel with Bazalgette’s (2009) recommendation that it be recognised as essential to literacy within contemporary society and embedded within the English curriculum. Both reports made it clear that the two elements of literacy should remain distinct, but a combined approach was recommended so that one might inform and build upon the other. Marsh and Bearne (2008) also called for national policy and for funding to be made available by the Department for Schools, Children and Families (DCSF) in order to support and enhance current, often disparate, practice.

In 2009, 10 years after the BFI’s call for recognition from education policy-makers expressed in Making Movies Matter (British Film institute 1999), a new initiative was launched with the intention of addressing some of the challenges raised in Moving Literacy On (Marsh and Bearne 2008) and Impacts of Moving Image Education (Bazalgette 2009). The initiative aimed to act on the recommendations for sustained evaluation, the generation of evidence and the need for advocacy to achieve government recognition of the value of media literacy. Film: 21st Century Literacy: A Strategy for Film Education Across the UK was funded and published by the UK Film Council and launched in 2009. In a shift from the previously advocated ‘media literacy’, the Strategy now called for ‘film education’, although the definition and overall aims ran in parallel. Film education was defined as “making film more accessible to children and young people for their enjoyment, as a means of understanding the world and as a medium of self-expression” (UK Film Council 2009). The ‘3Cs’ originally advocated by the Charter for Media Literacy (Media Literacy Task Force 2005) were incorporated as the central thematic strands of the Strategy in order to define the theoretical and practical concerns of film education (UK Film Council 2009). The ‘3Cs’ are cultural access (opportunities to watch a broad and diverse range of films), critical understanding (skills of analysis, using film theory and language) and creative activity (filmmaking) (UK Film Council 2009). The intention was to build on these broadly theoretical statements to develop best practice, a national strategy through the evaluation of a number of funded pilot projects, and to raise the profile of film education on UK and international, government policy agendas (UK Film Council 2009). The 21st Century Literacy Leadership Group, comprising representatives of BFI Education, Film Club, First Light, Skillset and Film Education, worked in partnership with Regional Screen Agencies and under the overall guidance of the UK Film Council to develop criteria for pilot projects. In addition, the Leadership Group worked to develop detailed evaluation schema to ensure that each pilot would be able to demonstrate key objectives that fell within the ‘3Cs’. These objectives included access to diverse moving image media, development of critical approaches, professional development for practitioners and the opportunity for creative practice (UK Film Council 2009). ‘Creative practice’ referred solely to making films and Film: 21st Century Literacy (UK Film Council 2009) appeared to be aimed at teaching about rather than through film and held links with the production industry at its core. The budgetary requirements of each project were assessed according to reach and were dependent on the numbers of school pupils engaged in the pilots. The aims of 21st Century Literacy therefore hinged on demonstrating not only the ‘value’ of film to education, but also that this ‘value’ could be quantified in monetary terms and impact on the future of the British film production industry.

The development, delivery and evaluation of the pilots took over two years and in 2011 an analysis of the strategy and associated programmes of work was published in an editorial of the Media Education Association’s online journal, POV. Battling over 21st Century Literacy (Bazalgette and Wall 2011) summarised the findings of the six pilot projects and outlined the positive outcomes as well as some of the issues raised throughout the course of the projects’ delivery and evaluation. Bazalgette and Wall (2011) set the findings within the context of the organisational changes that had recently taken place, referencing the structure and remit of the UK Film Council (UKFC) and its closure in 2011. The UKFC had been established in 2000 and, although the Film Council had overall responsibility for film education, a number of other organisations had some responsibility for its coordination and development. There was no definitive strategy for this work and, as a result, the nine Regional Screen Agencies (RSAs) established to co-ordinate activity and award funding in their particular area varied greatly and demonstrated disparate working practices. The result was a lack of cohesion across the regions and across individual practitioners within those regions (Bazalgette and Wall 2011). When the UKFC was closed and the majority of the RSAs broken up, activity, such as Lottery funding for project work, continued but was dispersed across separate organisations. The newly established Creative England and the BFI were now required to fill the gap left by the closure of the UKFC and, with school expenditure and CPD reduced, increasing numbers of public and private organisations and enterprises had to compete for limited funding to continue any kind of film education activity. Within this organisational context, the POV editorial made some encouraging comments regarding 21st Century Literacy, but this was limited to a few brief statements. Bazalgette and Wall (2011) welcomed the creation of evidence to support film education that resulted from the pilot projects and the range of contexts within which the work took place, which demonstrated a broad application of film to the curriculum and to wider educational settings outside of the formal classroom. However, the pilot projects also demonstrated insufficient evaluation that would enable analysis of prior learning and the long-term impacts of film education; an uncoordinated approach to the ‘3Cs’ so that the three elements were not cohesive; and a lack of understanding from teachers regarding the difference between learning about film and learning thr...