iANZAC Newcastle: Young People’s Visions of ANZAC

Project Leader: Dr Robert Parkes
Project Team: Dr Debra Donnelly, Dr Heather Sharp, Dr Kath Grushka, and Mrs Vicki Parkes.

Project Description:
The iANZAC project seeks to capture and disseminate the stories young Australians tell about what ANZAC means to them or their communities. Their visions will be presented as short documentary videos, filmed and edited on iPhones or iPads, and celebrated at a public screening, scheduled to commemorate the ANZAC centenary. The project will involve training 20 pre-service teachers as mentors to work with production teams (of 4 or 5 students) in 10 schools. Project teams and mentors will be trained in different styles of documentary filmmaking; film grammar; narrative structure; and the technical aspects of shooting, capturing and editing digital video using an iDevice (such as an iPhone or iPad). Students will return to their schools [School Term 1, 2015] and develop their short digital documentary films, responding to the invitation to: “Tell us what ANZAC means to you (or your community)”. Students are encouraged to conduct original research in their local communities (ie. to gather family stories, or ANZAC heirlooms and the stories that sit around them) and to reflect the results of the research in their documentaries. Each documentary will be a maximum of 5 minutes in length. Each school team will be supported by two of the pre-service teacher mentors trained in digital video production on iDevices for 2 hours per week for the 10 weeks of the school term. Films will be screened at a cinema-style lecture theatre on the University’s City or Callaghan campus, scheduled to align with commemoration of the ANZAC centenary. After the public screening, documentaries will be published to a special iANZAC YouTube channel for preservation and wider public dissemination. The University Project Team will engage participants in an evaluation of the process and outcomes of the project, and produce a final report by 31 May 2015.

Note: This project was nominated by Ms Sharon Grierson MP for the Newcastle Electorate, and is funded by the ANZAC Centenary Grant Program.