We’re very proud to make films for a living. We love what we do and we’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to pass our experience on to budding filmmakers and creatives both locally and in Hull’s partner city Freetown in Sierra Leone. At Nova, we bring together the people best placed to deliver workshops – and we ensure that development doesn’t end with the last session – providing tangible opportunities for young people to build on what they’ve learnt and take their new skills further.
Since 2006 members of the Nova team have worked regularly in Hull’s partner city of Freetown in Sierra Leone where we’ve built a strong friendship and working relationship with film-maker Lansana Mansaray (aka Barmmy Boy).
In 2020 we were delighted to partner with Barmmy, his colleague Arthur and their Freetown based organisation The Freetown Media Centre, to win a £100k British Council contract to deliver a series of intensive workshops in Freetown, helping to build the skills of emerging film-makers in Sierra Leone.
Over the course of 14 months we ran six one-week-long workshops, sub-contracting in film-makers Dom Bush and Alyaa Sirelkhatim, in which more than 50 participants produced shortform documentary films about life in Freetown.
Our contract with Hull City Council’s Maritime City team has seen us working with a diverse group of young Hull residents across a range of creative and digital media. The Nova crew brought together a team which includes writer Russ Litten, illustrator Alice Beasley, artist Annie Luke Turner and musician Stew Baxter. In an extensive series of workshops held at Juice Studios on Humber Street, our participants have written, painted, drawn and gathered sounds which will all form part of an exciting new short film, combining animation and video, to be released in 2025 as part of the Maritime City launch.
In recent months we’ve been delighted to be commissioned to produce work focussing on projects which promote equality and inclusion – and we’ll always find ways to support and develop this strand of our work.
Unfortunately, for insurance reasons, we are unable to accommodate young people on work experience from school. Sorry. But we love to hear from schools and we will always try to make time to talk to school groups and help with education projects.
