Young people showcase Warwickshire’s national stop smoking films
On 11 July 2011 two schools in Warwickshire and the Youth Justice Service premiered their stop smoking films to an audience of health experts and students as part of Cut Films, a national film competition to encourage young people not to smoke.
Students from ASH Green School, The Avon Valley School and young people from the Youth Justice Service premiered their twelve films to an audience of their peers, parents and wider community.
One of the films, ‘Cut it OUT’, created by Charlotte Wilkinson, a 14-year-old student at ASH Green School near Nuneaton and Bedworth, was chosen as the national winner of Cut Films 2011 for communicating the most provocative and engaging stop smoking messages for young people at a glittering awards reception in London.
At the Smokefree Warwickshire local awards, which were celebrated on 11 July students from Avon Valley School & Performing Arts College accepted their award as overall winner for their film, ‘It’s not just the smokers who suffer’.
The Cut Films competition, promoted to schools and youth groups nationwide, encourages young people to research, write and produce a short film about why smoking isn’t cool, and then publish them for other young people to view and vote on social networking sites such as You Tube, Twitter and Facebook – all via the Cut Films competition website www.cutfilms.org.
Following a pilot last year, this year’s Cut Films competition has proved hugely popular amongst teachers and students, attracting nearly 80 online film entries from schools, youth groups and individuals from all over the UK, over 1,000 votes just on the top ten films and over 10,000 views on YouTube.
Smoking is the UK’s most preventable cause of early death, two out of three smokers start smoking in their teens and we’re committed to preventing young people starting to smoke. Cut Films provides an excellent way of engaging young people, as it challenges them to explore their peers’ attitudes towards smoking and create persuasive films which can be shared online using the powerful connections of social media to convey messages which they think are effective.
Encouragingly, the research evaluation for this project shows that making the films has strengthened young people’s attitudes towards not smoking.
Pete Edwards, Head of Media Studies at from ASH Green School, said “Cut Films fitted really well with as a creative project for our health and wellbeing curriculum and gave students the opportunity to explore their personal attitudes to smoking, finances and peer pressure.”
As part of Cut Films evidence-based approach, the local evaluation concluded that ‘a clear positive shift of attitude can be seen among the young people engaged in the project
- ASH
Action on Smoking and Health.