Embracing a Brighter 2021 after Thriving in a Difficult 2020! From January to April 2021.
Students enjoyed engaging with our first Inspirational Speaker of 2021 – Motion Graphics Artist Antonio Milo, founder-director of Blimp Productions – this coming Thursday. Welcome back Antonio- your last talk was a smash hit!
We are proud to announce our 13th AGM – January 12th, with very positive employment outcomes for our young trainees in the Annual Management Report and an exciting development programme ahead for our charity.
Saturday January 30th was the third and final remotely delivered session of the ‘Set Ready Training’ pilot scheme funded by Screen Skills, led by Sue Russo at FilmFixer and delivered by Matt Gallagher, Jude Winstanley, Amie Tridgell and Guy Bishop. Attended by no less than 43 young students from Creative Sparkworks and Fully Focused Productions, who all engaged with and completed AQA Unit Awards accreditation on “Set knowledge” , “Set administration” with the “Work experience” unit awaiting completion for opportunities to work on live locations. Brilliant feedback from all the young people! Massive thanks to all involved in bringing this to fruition and looking forwards to the amazing work opportunities brought to our young people.(tags: the above peoples….)
We had another great meeting with Lambeth Youth Promise at their informal Q&A session where we made some more good links with like-minded youth organizations and learnt about the solid and ambitious plans in place to support youth employment in Lambeth. Thank you very much to Shaffique Prabattani for organising and compering. We are looking forward to participating and contributing to Youth Promise and “Lambeth Made” in the months ahead.
Creative Sparkworks had a wonderful meeting with Rebecca Baker – now leading Film London’s Equal Access Network Scheme introducing our dynamic Youth Employment Manager Kali Bradford. All 3 of us are looking forward to developing and consolidating training and employment and masterclass opportunities together in the very near future.
We welcomed Rebecca to meet our students at one of our Inspirational Speaker Event in the next weeks. She has given them marvellous cv clinics & pointed them in the direction of paid work.
We’re excited to be talking some more with Harriet and Sarah at SPE Spotlight, Sony Pictures, who arranged mentoring & panel talks by different levels of their staff, matching Sony Pictures roles with the aspirations of our talented trainees. What a brilliant opportunity!
London Youth which we are members of, hosted an excellent employability webinar bringing us up to date with support and opportunities in the current landscape for young London residents. Networking and breakout rooms enabled us to meet lovely new organizations working in similar fields.
We welcomed our returning guest inspirational speaker Annetta Laufer, writer, director, producer, and founder of Roman Candle Productions, on Thursday 18th February.
3 more trainees succeeded in gaining paid work in the industry with the dedication of their tutors and mentors. A total of 26 participants have now recently gained entry-level paid jobs!!
Fantastic news that Matthew Boone “madebyboone.com” shared his writer and director knowledge of filming a wide range of music videos to our students in a specialised workshop.
Black Thrive Lambeth Zoom meeting for Lambeth charities who want to apply for their Round 2 of funding focused on their Employment Project Grant Fund. The CEO found some inspiring connections and the whole event was super-informative and inclusive.
ASSOCIATION OF CHAIRS WEBINAR attended by our Chair, Bridget Edwards which she found to be very informative especially around Zoom Board Meeting etiquette and protocols, with some original ideas for ice-breakers.
PARTISAN UK – We met with Jay from Partisan and are looking forward to confirming supervision with him soon for staff development for our mentoring team during these ongoing time of change and challenge. Thank you Winston Goode @Juvenis for the introduction.
We were proud to collaborate with ELEVATE Lambeth on the EQUIP program funded by the European Social Fund and Education & Skills Funding Agency, managed by the Paddington Development Trust for training and employment, which they have been supporting. We were proud to share the 90% successful outcomes of our participants gaining paid entry-level jobs in the film and TV industries, or a place on further training and higher education.
DAVINCI software coaching session led by Saifudiyn was an opportunity for our talented trainees to further develop essential skills in the new digital world.
SONY PICTURES SPOTLIGHT panel gave another amazingly useful and interesting talk on Security, Safety & Sustainability:
We are part of the Lambeth Youth Promise Providers Network meeting where we learned about the amazing progress of this initiative, led by Shaffiqe Prebandi: formation of 3 new LambethMADE youth hubs with DWP work coaches on-site, also of the completed sleek youth website and promotional flyers. Sparkworks will definitely be sharing these with all our young Lambeth trainees and alumni for great work and training opportunities.
April 1st was the final day of the Digi-Sparks core course in software programme coaching where we all got together to share feedback, which was greatly appreciated by the staff team as it was super-positive! Thanks were duly given to the fabulous group of young participants with their 90% successful outcomes in gaining paid work in the film and TV industries and to the dedicated and brilliant staff team – Sam, Saif and Kali. And with thanks to the Project Manager and CEO, Sylvia and to Fiona for the social media input.
A partnership bid is being written with our colleagues at Iconic Steps for the new Walcot Foundation ‘Bounce Back’ Grant to address the serious increase in unemployment with young Lambeth residents ages 18 to 30 due to the impact of the pandemic. We’re excited to be working together and hope this is the first of several partnership bids in Lambeth.
The 3 dedicated Mentors for the Digi-Sparks project met for the final Zoom for a de-briefing and evaluating meeting for this programme. The outcomes of 5 months of in-depth sustained mentoring by industry professionals who have a passion to increase entry-level employment in the industry for talented young people from under-represented groups, were remarkable and encouraging. 90% or 14 out of 16 participants on the course are now in paid work, 3 of them in full-time and 5 of them in over 2 weeks and increasing.
We have connected with PARTISAN (www.partisanuk.org.uk) to start developing a supervision programme for mentors and staff. During these difficult times, their roles have often been challenging and clinical supervision as staff development will be welcomed. With thanks to Winston of Juvenis for the introduction.
Equalities Work’ at The Foundry in Vauxhall, invited Creative Sparkworks to join in delivering a programme to encourage children and young people in Lambeth secondary schools to find out more about creating employment opportunities they can become involved in when planning their futures. We are excited to start this with our film tutors sometime this May.
Sony Pictures introduced us to their Theatrical Team with a view to another great talk about employment openings in this sector of Sony.
We are joining in with planning a Lambeth Walk Street Festival for 31st August as a blend of the old and the new of our famous street can go on The Way We Work page/with the community– old fashioned market, Pearlie Kings and Queens, double-decker food bus from Brixton, musicians, dancing, llamas – all sorts of fun is planned to bring our community together and cheer us along after these very difficult times.
A very exciting day for our Digi-Sparks filmmakers group at The Workshop at the Old Lambeth Fire Station! To be continued! With a thrilling script in place , the crew is now preparing for set-building, auditioning and production during May.
Huge thanks to this Essential viewing! How to manage your TAX and Personal Finance as a freelancer in the film and TV industry – a talk by David Thomas Media Ltd. who advises ScreenSkills on such important matters. Check out his website at:
About Us (davidthomasmedia.com)