N IMBUS AND L EONARDO

I conducted an interview⁴⁸ with Leonardo, Nimbus and Mr. P one lunchtime in the third term of the Clip Club. Leonardo generally expressed himself well but was rather less assertive and found it difficult to integrate socially. He was relatively new to the school and gravitated towards Nimbus in group work, however, his

47 Hear young research participant Daniel’s words at 03:20’ on the second movie:

https://fashioningandflow.wordpress.com/category/case-study-data-analysis/case-study-c-st-elizabeth-primary-school/the-critical-creators/ [Accessed 21 September 2015]

48 As my research progressed I refrained from asking the ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’ questions evidenced here, which were too pointed and overly related to my research. I began asking open-ended questions of a ‘Tell me about...’ nature, allowing for more fluid, less directed responses, about feelings and experiences.

estrangement gradually changed for the better with the passage of time. I asked them about issues of control when film-making:

Nimbus, Leonardo & Mr. P interview

Audio available at https://soundcloud.com/shelleuk/phd-thesis-interview-2-mrp-leonardo-nimbus-march-2013/s-uhdHC#t=03:29 [Accessed 21

September 2015]

Part 1:

Nimbus: Control?

Michelle: If I were to throw that one at you? Does it give you control?

Nimbus: Yeah. Yeah, it does, because like, if you were doing a lesson;

how to make a film, then what they're going to do is they're going to give you some software, they're going to give you a subject and they're going to say, "Make a film on this", although in Clip Club we had more control over what we did, so like we didn't have to do some sort of particular subject.

Well, during the movie-making process we did, because it was making a movie, but we got to choose what the movie was about, instead of someone saying, "Here's your movie.

Make a film", and then you've got to work out how to do all this stuff with this just particular subject you might not even be particularly interested in said subject.

Michelle: Right. Okay, well they're great points, thank you. Mr P learning mentor, what would you say, what have you got to say about maybe the social aspects of this process; this experience?

Mr.P: I would say one of the key elements of the group as a whole has been how they've learned to work with each other, and support each other, not just through the process of making the movie and the process of learning how to make films and all that encompasses, it's also elements that I've seen in and around the school with the group. So yes, when they're all in a room, working together, they have a goal; they have an aim; it's very obvious that they want to make this movie, they want to make it well, and to do that they have to cooperate with each other, they have to support each other, they have to find who is strong in certain areas, experiment a little bit and try different things. So all of that is I would say contained but it's there; you're there for an hour on a Tuesday night and you have a common goal. What I've seen around the school outside, which is… I think comes from the strength of Clip Club and the group is their… how they behave to each other

outside, in their lessons and in the playground and how they've been very supportive. They're a much stronger group than they ever would have been, and they're all very different individuals that potentially would not have had anything to do with each other before Clip Club. So I've seen a real camaraderie that's stretched out into other areas of the school, and that for me as learning mentor obviously is a huge plus because, you know, it's enough to make you redundant really.

Part 2:

Audio available at https://soundcloud.com/shelleuk/phd-thesis-interview-2-mrp-leonardo-nimbus-march-2013/s-uhdHC#t=09:37 [Accessed 21

September 2015]

Michelle: Right. Okay. Just one more question I think. What do you think… has anything changed about you from the beginning until now?

Leonardo: Well, obvious… well, for me, independence.

Independence…

Michelle: Confidence?

Leonardo: Confidence, and at the beginning like Nimbus said, he said that it's not like ... the teacher don't tell you, do this, and then make a film about it. It gives us free explanation, so it's not a fixed project.

Michelle: Right. Yeah, it gives you freedom?

Leonardo: Yeah.

(Interview with Nimbus, Leonardo and Mr. P, 2013)

Autonomous control & social interaction

It has already been made clear that Nimbus enjoys learning autonomy, and to be encouraged to indulge this predisposition in school is refreshing for him. Perhaps as a result of this, however, he is dismissive of the obligation to work with content of no interest to him. Even if the specified task were to include film-making, he speculates that the subject matter would be some approved ‘learning topic’ with a prescribed outcome. A point reinforced by Leonardo, who, referencing Nimbus’ remark, offers the loaded observation that the nature of Clip Club ‘gives us free explanation, so it's not a fixed project.’ Both Leonardo and Nimbus appear to be equipped with a metacognitive sense and can make objective judgements on the predictable

mainstream practices of compliance. This is perhaps because their family lives are such that they have been exposed to certain experiences that develop independent creativity and/or critique. Whatever the case, it is implied that the open-ended and democratic ‘possibility thinking’ (Craft 2013) that Clip Club invited was an allure for these children.

It is unsurprising that Mr. P.’s comments on the social benefits of the project echo those of his son, Nimbus. Both recount how the group support each other in ways that move beyond the boundaries of the Club to affect relations in the normal school day. As a learning mentor, Mr. P has a broad perspective on the children and as such he occupies an in-between interstitial space. It is from this vantage point that he advocates for the Clip Club’s socialising influence which he puts down to a sustained collective purpose.

Practitioner insight: review and redraft

In this and future participants’ contributions, we hear Nimbus invoke the rubric of audiovisual language in ways that indicate possible routes to literacy work in which authorial choice, form, structure and artistry are the foci. Not only this but DV editing practices render iterative approaches to creative work a transparent standard procedure, as disclosed by Nimbus in his comment on feeling no ‘shame’ at taking several shots of the same thing. Traditional literacy exacts grammatically precise, linear and finished paper-based outcomes, with ‘monologic’ as opposed to dialogic appeal. The monomodal has its place in literacy practices, but this account argues for the relevance of provisional, non-linear, open-ended meaning-making and contingent decisions made ‘on the fly’- activities that characterise media production. In the process of editing, media entities (DV clips and sounds in time) become malleable, quasi-tactile raw materials, ‘workable’ familiar symbols, which ordered in certain sequences, for certain lengths of time, to a certain pace and rhythm, wield an aesthetic power. Giving young people repeated opportunities for iterative digital redrafting gives them powerful control over their own learning, a luxury that few schools feel they can offer in any sustained way.

Clip Club members were ‘free to explain’ their story and allow it to unfold, in a language that was at once new and familiar to them, the language of film: familiar in that many have consumed it from infancy, and new in terms of them being handed

the intellectual resources and skills to interpret and produce it. Arguably one of the reasons why the children kept returning to the Club, beyond the social appeal, was precisely this fascination with the facets of artistry inherent to film-making and the audiovisual medium. Given the tools and sensitive pedagogic intervention, it is a process of inscription that builds on passive accumulated knowledge of the moving image, over which young people can exert autonomous and nuanced creative control.

These are educational experiences that deliver a balanced sense of relevant learning in the service of self-determined ends.