Overview

Young Screenwriters gives young people the opportunity to work with professional screenwriters, authors, storytellers and filmmakers to explore the techniques of story development and screenwriting and to produce their own screenplays and films. The aim of Young Screenwriters is to inspire and enthuse young people about writing for film and help develop and expand their literacy skills.

Young Screenwriters currently works with Nottingham schools who are members of Central Education Improvement Partnership (EIP). The schools have identified literacy as a priority area for development and Central EIP manager Sonia Long was able to secure funding from Nottingham NDC to develop the initiative with Broadway Cinema & Media Centre.

This school year (2009/10) our focus is on book-to-film adaptations so all of the projects will use books as source material for the development of film scripts. Many children’s books have been made into films – we have put together a list of all of the ones we could think of which you can view and download by following the link in the column to your right.

We are delighted to be working with children’s author Alan Gibbons who has given us permission to use his book of short stories Dark Spaces as source material. His stories are gripping and engaging and provide a great source of inspiration.

Festival

There will be a Young Screenwriters Festival at Broadway w/c 12th July 2010 where we will screen the films written and made by the young people during the projects. We have a dedicated Festival section on the website where you can find up to date details of the program.

Resources and Showcase

A group of teachers will be working with screenwriters to produce learning resources which will be uploaded to the Resources section. We will also be uploading examples of the scripts and films produced by young people in the Showcase section.

Updates

As the project develops we will keep you informed of progress through regular posts on the News section of the website. You can filter updates by school name using the News Topics menu in the column to your right. The most recent posts will also appear in this column. We will also be posting screenwriting-related articles under the News topic heading and flagging up updates and additions to the Resources, Showcase and Links sections under the Website Updates topic heading.