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Four Hour Creative Challenge for Powys Squad at Hay Festival

A film can take days and months of hard work to make and finish, but 21 members of the Powys Writing Squad gained a day's insight into digital poetry in an intensive workshop at the Hay Literature Festival on Thursday 3 June 2010. They undertook the challenge to produce ‘poem films’ in just four hours, with the expert guidance and support of Tom Barrance and Francesca Kay.

Tom Barrance is Director of Media Education Wales, a non-profit organisation which supports media and moving image education around Wales and beyond. Francesca Kay has over 20 years experience in writing poetry for and with children.

The children worked in groups to write, produce and showcase their films. Francesca chose ‘Festival’ as the theme for the workshop, and then, having found out about film making from Tom, the children went off in groups with a camcorder to explore the grounds of the festival and film interesting sights and scenes. They then returned to write poems inspired by their images. Having edited, performed and recorded their poems they edited their visuals to the poems and screened them to a captivated audience.

To view pictures from the workshop click here
and to watch the films made by the Powys Squad click here

This workshop was funded by Academi.