ESSA Video Competition

Sponsors : Channel 4

In 2008 Channel 4 Education embarked on a new strategy to reach and
engage with 14 - 19 year olds on their own terms. We shifted the focus
of our commissioning approach from solely linear TV programmes to
innovative cross-platform projects that encourage a two-way
participation, and that offer the chance to stimulate conversation
around learning experiences. We are not putting 'TV on the web' but
rather want to employ creative and distinctive ways of offering
educative content to teens, focussing on issues derived from their needs
and desires that may be outside the more formal education curriculum.

Examples of our recent commissions include:

Year Dot, a multi-layered web and TV project following 15 teenagers for
"the first year of the rest of their lives" - documenting how teens are
using traditional networks and online networks to meet the real life
challenges they may face.

Battlefront reflects how easy it is for anyone passionate about a
cause to start a campaign using social media, but also to show the long
and often arduous journey that every successful campaign has to go on .
The project lives in many places across the web, as well as creating
content for two 5-part television series. The legacy of the project will
be the video and blog posts from the teens as they meet mentors and
develop their campaign, backed up with 'The Campaigners Handbook', an
interactive guide to starting and running your own campaign, with advice
from all our mentors and links to the best resources around the web.

Bow Street Runner is a web-based game set in the Georgian London
underworld, where players must work their way through a series of gritty
crimes in the tough and unruly Covent Garden of the mid 1700s . Over
five episodes the player must prove to a cynical public the benefits of
'modern' police work by discover ing the identity of a criminal
gangleader. Historically accurate and fun to play, Bow Street Runner won
the 2009 interactive Children's BAFTA.

http://www.channel4.com/