This article was written by Louise Higginbottom (Year 8 student).
The week before the half term holidays, year 8 had two fun and extravagant days – I’m sure everyone who took part would agree. It was an amazing experience that I shared with fellow students from our year group.
On Tuesday, we met up with representatives from the Anne Frank Trust and took time to talk to the team leading our activities. We worked in groups to design a short film about two important themes: Islamophobia or Homophobia.
The film briefs produced were creative and we had to ensure each story had a moral. We then took time, on both days, to film each story. These films included different scenes filmed across school.
An important goal and challenge for us was to demonstrate the roles and opinions of characters we might not have liked in order to make our point. We had the privilege of working with some high-tech equipment such as cameras with linked microphones. The scenes of the stories included an introduction, a dilemma and a solution.
From a personal perspective, as I want to go into acting in the future, it was a great experience and empowered me with such ambition and confidence. It definitely opened my eyes to the terrible opinions some people have about different religions and sexualities. The activities influenced me to have more of an open mind regarding these issues.
Finally, it helped me bond with other people that I haven’t really spoken to before as they are not in my classes. I really enjoyed the experience!