Media – Vital North Partnership

Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books are currently raising £7,000 to put children with additional needs at the heart of their story. In this post, hear how film production intern and Newcastle University PhD candidate Evripidis Karydis has supported Seven Stories’ very first crowdfunding campaign…

Seven Stories believe that stories help children to understand the world around them, and that every child regardless of age, gender, background and ability should have the opportunity to enjoy this experience.

With this in mind and with the promise of 50% match funding from the Community Foundation Tyne and Wear, they decided to try crowdfunding for the first time to secure additional funding from their supporters and the public. Seven Stories will be using the money raised to fund a range of accessible events and experiences designed specifically for children with sensory and additional needs.

Launching the Life-changing Stories campaign, Kate Edwards, Seven Stories’ Chief Executive, said: “Our ambition is for Seven Stories to be a hub for parents and carers of children with disabilities to socialise, play and learn more about how to enrich their children’s lives through the wonderful world of children’s books.”

This campaign video was filmed and edited by PhD student Evripidis Karydis (or Evris, for short!), who produced two 4 minute trailer videos to support the communications. Evris is undertaking an NCL Internship through Newcastle University’s Careers Service. NCL Internships are open to all current Newcastle University students, and offer a placement of up to 100 hours during University terms and a student bursary of £750, made up of contributions from the business and the University.

Marketing and Communications Manager Victoria Sanderson, said of Evris’ work on the crowdfunding campaign: “Evris’ performance throughout the project was exceptional; he offered expert guidance when it was required, identified any risks prior to filming which increased efficiency, met deadlines, used his initiative when editing the videos and was accommodating with amends, even when they arrived after signing-off. Overall, Evris was professional and a delight to work with.”

This built on Evris’ previous internship with Seven Stories in the 2016/17 academic year, where he filmed Seven Stories’ Living Books project in early years settings, working with the Creative Learning and Engagement Team.

For Evris, “having already completed a NCL internship with Seven Stories during the 2016/17 academic year it was not difficult for me to decide to work with the foundation once again. The people at Seven Stories are true professionals and really helped me to produce high quality videos for their causes. Furthermore, the reason behind the crowdfunding campaign was another motivation for me to say yes and work once more with Seven Stories and I am pleased that my videos contributed in order to achieve the goal of raising £7000.”

“Being an aspiring filmmaker myself working through my internship I have managed again to practice my filmmaking craft and helped me develop my communication skills.”

“The highlight for me during my placement was when I got the chance to film a family for the crowdfunding campaign video as it gave me a good insight of the people who were going to be benefited by the campaign.”

“I truly believe that the work being done at Seven Stories is really important as it is making a massive difference in children’s lives and their families and I would really like to work with them again in the future.”

Take a look at Evris’ second video from the Life-changing Stories campaign:

And the results? Well, Seven Stories hit over 75% of their funding target in the first day of the crowdfunding campaign, which is amazing news! Thank you to Evris for helping to make this campaign such a success. But they still need a few more donations to hit their £7000 target before 2^nd April 2018 – can you help Seven Stories to ensure that every child is part of their story?

Find out more about the campaign and donate now at: http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/life-changing-stories

What kind of utopias do children imagine? In July, Newcastle University’s Professor Richard Clay is hosting Utopia: In Search of the Dream, a new three part documentary on BBC Four – featuring Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books!

The documentary, which will begin on Tuesday 8th August at 9pm, explores the concept of utopia by looking at this from a range of different perspectives. From Thomas Moore’s sixteenth-century coining of the term, to Newcastle’s own Thomas Spence, Soviet spa towns, wikipedians, feminist theatre, Steve Reich, Minecraft, Star Trek and beyond, the series is certainly wide-ranging.

Richard Clay, Professor of Digital Humanities in Newcastle University’s Faculty of Humanieis, Arts and Social Sciences, explains how the opportunity to curate Utopia came about: “I’ve done a couple of BBC4 documentaries in the past (The French Revolution: Tearing up History and A Brief History of Graffiti) and a production company approached me and said they’d been commissioned to make some films about utopia for the BBC with me writing and presenting. At first I thought it’s just too big a topic, spanning historical periods and cultures. But I concluded that it’d be a fascinating subject to explore and an amazing experience to film – which it was, especially the time we spent with young people at Seven Stories. Their vision and principles made me wonder whether Jean-Jacque Rousseau was right back in the eighteenth century – we’re born utopian and then corrupted by society…”

He invited Matthew Grenby, Professor of 18^th-Century Studies in Newcastle University’s School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics to participate in the documentary. Professor Grenby’s research interests lie in children’s literature and culture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Professor Grenby led a workshop at Seven Stories with a group of Year 5 children from West Jesmond Primary School to explore how both historical and contemporary children’s books influence children’s visions of alternative worlds. Using the concept of utopia as a starting point, the children created drawings and talked about the other worlds they conceived of.

Drawings by children from West Jesmond Primary School. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books — Drawings by children from West Jesmond Primary School. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books

Professor Grenby said: “Seven Stories was the perfect venue for filming, being itself a sort of utopian vision of what a child-friendly museum of children’s books can be.

The children from West Jesmond Primary School were fantastic. We asked them to draw pictures of their own personal utopias. The results were really wonderful. Waterworlds, worlds floating in the air, a city situated on a gigantic flower, with different zones for different grades of celebrities. When we asked the children what the rules would be in their utopian societies, there was a definite air of radicalism. One girl said that cars would be against the law. Another said there’d be no kings or queens! One of the boys said that everyone would have to do at least half an hour’s sport every day.

But not all of these fantasy worlds were happy places. In one girl’s vision of the future, all the people were sad because they had to live in the sea, and all the fish were unhappy because they had to live on the land. It was a remarkable insight into how utopian thinking gives a really direct insight into people’s most pressing concerns in the now.”

Filming takes place for Utopia: In Search of the Dream at Seven Stories. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books — Filming takes place for Utopia: In Search of the Dream at Seven Stories. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books

John Beattie, Business Development Manager at Seven Stories, worked with Professor Grenby and the production company, Clear Story, to set up and support the filming. John said:

“Dystopias are a trend in contemporary children’s literature – with titles like The Hunger Games and Divergent dominating bestseller lists – so it was really interesting to watch the young people discussing utopias with Professor Grenby. Books can help children to identify with and shape the world around them, and exploring utopian worlds provides positive models for children to explore how society might develop in the future.”

And I’ll leave it to Professor Richard Clay to have the last word: “the whole crew loved filming at Seven Stories. So big thanks to your team, that great school, and those fab youngsters. The sequences we shot look wonderful!”

I’m looking forward to watching the documentary, and if you miss it tonight, then make sure you catch it on BBC iPlayer!

Tag: Media

Filming Seven Stories’ Life-Changing Stories campaign

In search of utopia with BBC Four