‘Full of very different people all mixed up together’: understanding community and environment through the classroom video project

A video project in Leeds provided five primary schools with equipment and assistance to enable children to produce videos, broadly on the theme of ‘the environment’. This article discusses how the scheme gave children a valuable opportunity to discuss and evaluate their local community. The project encouraged cooperation, and the development of a balanced but expressive argument, as well as drawing in many areas of the curriculum. It is suggested that video production can be a powerful vehicle for intercultural education, and that when focused on the community can foster positive reflection on diversity. The contribution of practical video work to media education is also considered. Includes quotations from interviews with teaching and video-making staff; 13 references; two photographs