Who are we?
FilmED, a collaboration between the Film Academy (The Netherlands), Łódź Film School (Poland) and HDK-Valand (Sweden), provides teaching staff the much-needed time, space and community to develop their own pedagogy and produce new methods, assignments, workshops and curricula. Our aim is to create better inclusive learning environments and more innovative curricula to train students to be more competent, critical and responsible in their use of audio-visual media.
We are at a turning point in education. In a world dominated by images and sounds – with the rise of social media, TikTok, memes and YouTube – the production of audio-visual content has become the primary way we learn, communicate and exchange. How can we, as educators, adapt to this shifting landscape? How are the needs of our students changing? How can we recognise the role pictures, gestures, sounds, shapes, body movements, rhythms, or object manipulation play in the process of knowledge production?
Higher education still primarily relies on linguistic methods of knowledge transfer – even if that knowledge came from practice or was originally produced in the medium of video, sound or image. This is an even starker problem at film schools as our primary medium of study is different from language. Due to the rigid separation of practice and theory, our students most often learn the theory of their unique audio-visual medium through text. This mediation abandons the power of direct presentation, flattening it into a description on a page. But the medium of film is a source of unique epistemology; we cannot simply tap into the pedagogical tradition of academia rooted in language to mine it.
Film schools occupy a unique position. We have ample equipment, facilities and staff – we have the means to directly engage in the applied process of audiovisual knowledge production. However, we have no existing interdisciplinary pedagogical frameworks to follow. In the absence of pedagogical aids, models, and available support structures, the burden of this crucial innovation falls on teachers and their spare time. Workshops teaching practice-based, embodied theory cannot be conceived on paper alone – they need to be developed with actual participants.
So how can we explore and share the riches of this source? What kind of innovative, daring and reflexive models could we come up with? How can we translate philosophical, theoretical and scientific knowledge into multimodal, interactive and embodied assignments?
Running between 2024 and 2027, we meet online and in person periodically throughout this time, working together and apart – all with the consistent support of a diverse international peer group. Through practice-based experimentation that cultivates a synergy between theory and practice using audio, visual, kinesthetic tools, participants will shift gears towards embodied and experiential learning. The outcome of this intense, collective work process will be the publication of innovative practice-oriented pedagogical guides to syllabuses with the necessary documentation such as formats, strategies and support materials.
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FilmED is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or [name of the granting authority]. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
