Deadline: 5pm on 30 September 2009

BBC Blast have partnered up with BAFTA to give you the opportunity to learn the skills needed to make TV happen. So if you want a chance to win £3000 to make a TV programme and have it shown on BBC2 and you’re aged 16-19 and have a passion for TV, this is your chance!

Submit your short programmes (less than five minutes in length) by 30th September 2009 focusing in particular on editing, scriptwriting, composing music, or DoP. Entries can be any genre, including Factual, Drama, Comedy and Entertainment.

The eight winners, two in each category, will secure a bursary of £3000 to work with industry BBC or external production company over a six month period to produce a new piece of work.

Four out of the eight finalists will be nominated for a Screen-Skills award and the winner will be announced at the TV Craft Awards in May 2010. In addition to the placements, nominees and winner will also receive inspirational meetings and ongoing mentoring respectively with BAFTA mentors.

The new films that the winners created during the scheme will be celebrated at a special event held at BAFTA in November 2010 for filmmakers and industry and opinion formers.

Full information: www.bbc.co.uk/blast/screenskills

Deadline: 23 October 2009

The Wellcome Trust Arts Awards support imaginative and experimental arts projects that investigate biomedical science.

The scheme aims to:

• stimulate interest, excitement and debate about biomedical science through the arts

• examine the social, cultural, and ethical impact of biomedical science

• support formal and informal learning

• encourage new ways of thinking

• encourage high quality interdisciplinary practice and collaborative partnerships in arts, science and/or education practice.

All art forms are covered by the programme: dance, drama, performance arts, visual arts, music, film, craft, photography, creative writing or digital media. The Trust invites applications for projects which engage adult audiences and/or young people.

The scheme is open to a wide range of people including, among others, artists, scientists, curators, filmmakers, writers, producers, directors, academics, science communicators, teachers, arts workers and education officers.

More: www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Public-engagement/Grants/Arts-Awards/index.htm

The Philip Lawrence Awards honour the achievements of young people who are having a positive impact on their communities, their lives and the lives of others. Each year Awards are made for the most inspiring and innovative work led by young people aged 11-20.

Not only will winners have the recognition that they are among the most inspiring young people across the UK and Northern Ireland, but they will also receive a cash prize to help them continue and develop their work in the community. The Awards are held in memory of Headteacher Philip Lawrence who believed in the massive potential of young people to make a difference and achieve great things.

Winning groups receive cash awards of up to £1,000 to invest in sustaining or developing the award-winning activity

www.philiplawrenceawards.net

Four young women told us about the experience they had when they visited the RSC to see a Comedy of Errors ……….. they will be using these reviews as part of their Arts Award portfolio . If you fancy doing a review or an arts award just get in touch !

Review of Comedy of Errors

Before we went in When we stood in the que to go into the performance, I felt very out of place because lots of primary school children were there and I felt to old to be watching this particular play. And then when the doors opened to go in, I noticed that the staff were very helpful to the primary school teachers but when they saw our group of teachers, they wasn’t as pleasant. For example they said hello to the school but they only smiled at us. I thought this was very rude. They also didn’t offer to take us to our seats and when I had been to that theatre before, they did take us to our seats.

The actors were all talking to the children when we went into sit down. I thought this was really nice as the children were all excited, however they never made any effort to come over and say hello to us, and they had to walk past us to say hello to the other children. Again I think this was because we were a group of teenagers. Although we were too old to be excited that the actors might come up to us and say hello, it would have been nice for them to smile to us. I also found this very disappointing.

I thought the theatre was quite nice, seeming as it was only temporary. It was nice and airy and every seat you sat in, you know that you would be able to see very well. The only criticism I had about the theatre was that it was very cold and I had to put my jacket on because it was so cold.

 Watching the Play

Whilst watching the play, I noticed that it was a very good play for children (primary) because there was a lot of childish humour. Personally I found that the plot was extremely difficult to keep up with and halfway through I was already lost. The children were laughing their heads of but I just found myself very confused.

The actors did interact with the audience by pretending to hide behind peoples seats and talking to them, saying things like “ shh don’t tell him im here”. The children found this hilarious but yet again they did stay away from us when they was doing that. Why was that? And also they pulled a child out from the audience which was a really nice thing to do. I thought that the actors were really good.

Overall, I think that the play was very childish and I didn’t enjoy it at all. Even after our youth worker ringing up the RSC to see if it was suitable for teenagers, and them saying yes it was perfectly suited, I thought it was very childish and defiantly not suited to teenagers. I liked the theatre and would go to that same theatre again to see something different but defiantly not “Comedy of Errors” again. The main reason for this is because it was very complicated plot and even after half an hour it lost me.

-Morgan