Educational strategy for an inclusive and flexible film literacy

The UN 2030 Agenda highlights the relevance of culture and education for the sustainable development of communities, fostering individual empowerment, active citizenship, social inclusion or territorial cohesion (UN, 2015; UNESCO, 2016 & 2017a). Two of the most urgent literacies for this purpose are the artistic and the digital, by stimulating the capacities ofexpression, communication, sensitivity, empathy and critical thinking, that define individuals and realities (European Commission, 2018; PNA, 2018). One of the artistic fields that, in this context, contributes to this definition, is cinema, by combining artistic/cultural expressions and experiences with modes of creation and reception that are increasingly dependent on digital technologies.The intersections between cinema and education have provided different strategies and studies that confirm their relevance to a critical awareness and appropriation of the world by young people (British Film Institute, 2015; Aidelman & Colell, 2018). The proliferation of images as privileged forms for expressing and experiencing reality brings the need to reinforce visual decoding and critical interpretation capacities (Lardoux, 2014). And this should be done in schools, through programs and activities that contribute to understanding the role of arts and digital communication in the construction of polysemic, idiosyncratic and informed perspectives, knowledge and sensibilities (Fortuna, 2014; Bergala, 2017). In Portugal, we have recently witnessed a strengthening of curriculum autonomy and flexibility in schools (Decree-Law nº 54 / & 55/2018), contributing to their more frequent participation in programs such as the National Arts Plan (PNA) or the National Film Plan (PNC). The promotion of artistic and film literacies in the school context aims not only at the principles, values and skills of compulsory schooling (AA.VV., 2016), but also at an active and participatory contextualization of school communities (especially teachers, students and their families) in the cultural and artistic life (regionally and nationally). However, many schools in rural/peripheral contexts are unable to participate in film education projects that invariably depend on infrastructure, institutions and human/technical resources active only in large urban centers. At the same time, time and resource constraints for implementing artistic education strategies in schools are frequent, making it difficult for cinema to be present in formal and non-formal teaching processes/contexts.Thus, there is a need for a film education strategy whose methodologies and resources allow to overcome geographical barriers and time constraints; reinforce the autonomy of each school context; contribute to territorial, social and cultural cohesion; and encourage active citizenship of young people. INSERT proposes to solve this need, covering the wide spectrum of cinema from theory to practice (stimulating the mastery of its language and critical interpretation and creative expression skills) and based on exclusively digitalmaterials and platforms, aimed at diverse, inclusive and flexible educational practices.The project will be based on the reality of five peripheral school contexts, initially characterized by information from the Directorate-General for Education and from focus-groups held in these schools (with teachers and principals). Based on this initial characterization, we will then design and produce the various resources of the project (20 video-tutorials on film theory, analysis and practice; 1 pedagogical manual to guide teachers; 1 website and 1 mobile application to access and use the project’s resources). These will be presented in schools, trained with the teachers and, finally, used in the implementation of activities with the students, which we will monitor over 4 months. At the end of this implementation, we will analyze the activities carried out and the results achieved, in order to assess the relevance of the project in the intervened contexts, correct weaknesses in its supports and strategies and, finally, launch and test INSERT as an open access tool, replicable in other contexts.For this, we propose an 18-month project, involving a multidisciplinary team with 9 researchers from various fields of education, cinema and audiovisual. The budget of 49.856,84€will be used mainly to hire a research assistant (for the various tasks of the project) and to purchase the audiovisual and IT material that will guarantee the viability and quality of the resources to be produced. Adding to DGE's participation in the project, we will also have 2 relevant consultants in the field of cinema and education: Francisco García García (former Professor of Audiovisual Communication at Univ. Complutense de Madrid and former director of CNICE) and Elsa Mendes (coordinator of National Film Plan).