This was a great trip, and well worth the visit. I hadn’t quite realised the negative impact that Covid has had on the out-of-school experiences for students, but it was a real privilege to be able to watch the pleasure that the 40 Year 11 Media students (and a handful of Year 13s) took from their whirlwind tour of the studios where the films were shot.

The key theme of the experience fits nicely with the vocational context of the course, the idea that the creative industries are a hugely important employer, with over 2 million creative jobs needing to be filled in 2024. Whether it is as a costume designer, props maker, set designer, camera operator, visual artist, foley sound artist, or many many other technical roles needed to create a film, the point is that there is a career path for anyone who has  a creative bone in their body.

What was particularly nice to see was that the students who had never seen a Harry Potter film enjoyed it as much as the Harry Potter 'nerds', and hopefully were inspired to get back into the classroom to start their next project, and maybe to reconsider whether or not their future employment might lie in this vital sector of the UK economy.

The tour is updated every year, so even those who have been before have new things to see and interact with, and the level of detail and the skill with which the props and sets have been constructed show what a real labour of love it was for the people who worked on them.

It was also great to see so many students just enjoying themselves, being children, having a great time with their friends and learning something at the same time. I’ve said it before, but we are fortunate to have so many great young people at AMVC, and hopefully some of them will have been inspired.

Thank you too, to the staff who came along to make it run so smoothly. It won’t be the last time I go.

 

Mr B Zaidi
Head of Media/Trip Leader