Friday 21 May 2010

Festival Unit - How to Achieve the Highest Grades

Festival Unit
The comments and marks below relate to the highest grades and they go down steeply from there.

You should keep written records – evidence – for each stage of your work for every learning objective.

Learning Objective 1
Understand the nature of festivals in the creative and media industries

Keep records of your research into three festivals.

(either on your blogs, hard-copies or on Pages. 12-15 marks

Learning Objective 2
Be able to contribute to the planning of a festival.

Keep a detailed record of your contributions and ideas for the planning of the festival. Show how you explored your ideas, regardless of whether the group accepted or rejected them. 12-15 marks

Learning Objective 3
Be able to contribute to the promotion of a festival.

Make a consistently effective and imaginative contribution to your festival.

Make a consistently effective and imaginative contribution to the production of imaginative promotional materials. 12-15 marks.

Learning Objective 4
Be able to contribute to the running of a festival

You should be able to:

• carry out responsibilities for own role in the running of the festival with confidence and high levels of efficiency.

• manage time effectively and works to schedules at all times.

• collaborate (work) positively with others at all times.

• consistently follows safe working practices carefully and efficiently.

• require very occasional support and guidance. 12-15 marks.

Tuesday 9 March 2010

Campaign - the stages you need to work through to complete this unit

Campaign
You need to keep detailed notes of all your ideas, plans, decisions and records of meetings you attend as well as anything you produce and any documentation you create while producing it.

There are four stages you need to complete and have evidence for either in your folders or on your blogs.

1. Research into three campaigns on the same or different topic. (Keep records, copies, downloads, blog entries in which you give your views on them ; the ideas that you thought of while examining these campaigns

2. Prepare and plan a campaign: you need two aims/objectives that you will test in your campaign materials and evaluation.
Decide who your target audience is going to be. Keep a record of your ideas (on your blogs or in your folders) on the campaign topic that you are going to prepare and briefly explain why you decided on your particular campaign and not another campaign that you might have done instead.

Identify the costs of your campaign: computer, pens, paper, software, glue, Internet access, etc.

Create a time-line which has dates for the preparation, planning, conducting and evaluating your campaing. In your blogs show awareness of the deadline (time constraints) that you have set yourself to produce your campaign. Use your time-line to see where you are. Again, keep a diary of your decisions, changes of mind and keep hold of drafts, as these will help show the process of your preparation and planning.

3. Produce the materials and conduct your campaign
Create the poster and also use it for a post on your blogsite with added written information with a couple of websites added for the audience’s further information). Place your poster where your target audience is going to be! Your blogsite is another place for your audience to see your poster with further information. Make sure that your post has a catchy title so GOOGLE will help your audience find it on the Web.

Create a three-four question questionnaire on your campaign materials and ask people about your poster. (Three-four questions).Think where is best to display it. Our College notice board? A doctor’s surgery, a public library, a particular notice board, as a handout in a school, etc.? Have you included your blogsite address in your poster?

4. Evaluate your campaign
You should be evaluating your work throughout your research, planning and preparation and production of campaign materials.
Consider and write about the following:

• Did you meet your deadline to begin your campaign?

• How long did you run the campaign for? ( A week or a fortnight?)

• Has your campaign met your stated objectives ( how, or if not, why?)

• Consider your target audiences’ responses to your poster, blog-post.

• What did the target audience consider to be effective about your campaign poster or blog post?

• What do your think is effective about your poster, etc. What is not?

• What would you do next time to refine your campaign?

• What have you learned from researching, preparing, planning and conducting a campaign?

See the time line on the class blog for an example of how to set one of these out and judge whether you have met your deadline for your campaign.

Friday 26 February 2010

Campaign - what you must cover in your blogs or porfolio folders

You need to keep detailed notes of all your ideas, plans, decisions and records of meetings you attend as well as anything you produce and any documentation you create while producing it.

Keep all your work in either blog or portfolio folder form.

You will be assessed on:
LO1: your investigations into the nature and purpose of campaigns
LO2: the planning of your campaign
LO3: the documentation of the running of your campaign
LO4: the monitering and review process of your campaign.

On completion of all your work for this unit you will be given two marks: Mark A and Mark B.

Mark A will be awarded on the basis of your Blog/Portfolio Folder and Mark B will be awarded on the basis of your teachers' observation of how you worked. The two marks will be added together for your final mark for this unit.

Tuesday 2 February 2010

Scene: investigation into creative and media employment roles and opportunities in London

Scenes Learning Objective 1: understand the range and types of creative activity in a chosen region.

To achieve band 3 (the highest grade):
 you will need to carry out a wide-ranging and well-focused investigation into creative and media activity in London.

You should provide a well-organised and thorough summary of creative and media activities in London with detailed evidence and well labelled examples. You should aim to use predictable and less predictable examples.

Example activities -
Create an A3 sized collage of the various types of creative and media activities available in London for 16-19s. If the images do not fully explain themselves, label them so that they are clear. You should find images from the Internet or from newspapers and magazines. You could later make a jpeg out of your work and upload the result on your blog.

For 'detailed evidence' you could make a few profiles of some of the activities on that you highlighted in your collages on your blogs or on A4 paper. For example, you could give the activity's locations, costs including discounts, ease of access for the disabled, travel costs, etc.. This will add the detail about these creative media activities that you need to get the higher grade.

Scene's Learning objective 2 calls for a brief investigation into employment roles and requirements in London.

 To get the highest band 3 grade you will need to:
Undertake a wide-ranging and well-focused investigation into opportunities for employment in the creative and media in London.

 Provide a well-organised summary of a range of jobs in the creative and media sector in London with substantial and detailed information of both the expected and less predictable examples.

 how detailed knowledge of the qualifications needed for the type of jobs available.

Example activity
As if for a newspaper or a magazine create a top 20 or top 30 creative and media employment opportunities list with brief examples of:
  • the creative or media job
  • the skills and qualifications needed to get this job
  • its likely income. 
This could be presented as a chart with three boxes, etc.

See the accompanying post for the link to the Guardian's job page for Creative and Media.

Research link for job opportunities in Creative and Media in London

Click here for the link

Monday 1 February 2010

How to get the highest grades for the Campaign unit

For working smarter!


To get the highest marks for the Learning Objectives for this unit you need to:


Learning Objective 1
Understand the nature and purpose of campaigns.
  • You need to undertake a well-focused and wide-ranging investigation which produces a good quantity of relevant material. (Research at least three campaigns).
  • Then compare the nature and purposes of campaigns, giving a wide range of examples. (12-15 marks)
Learning Objective 2:
Be able to prepare a campaign


  • You should generate inventive ideas and explore them thoughtfully.
  • Show a disciplined approach to the planning process with clear awareness of time constraints.
  • Produce substantial and well detailed documentation.
  • Demonstrate efficiency in gathering resources.
Produce imaginative campaign materials to a good standard. (in a least two forms of media.) (15-20 marks)


Learning Objective 3:
Be able to conduct a campaign

  • You need to manages or contribute to the management of a campaign efficiently, fulfilling objectives and working effectively within time contraints.
  • You should always collaborate positively with others.
  • Only need very occasional support and guidance.  (12-15)
Learning Objective 4:
Be able to moniter the preparation and conduct of a campaign


  • You should monitor your progress throughout the development and management of your campaign with regularity and care. (Comment on it  progress on your blogs.)
  • Make consistent use of the results of your work to refine ideas and outcomes, showing good understanding of your work's strengths and weaknessess. (That is, constantly evaluating your work).  (8-10 marks)
Remember these grades are from Band 3, the top grading band to aspire to. They fall from there.

Friday 22 January 2010

Tuesday 19 January 2010

Here's a great example of an anti-smoking campaign aimed at young people - UP2You

The Up2You Campaign by the Public Health Agency

Notice how they thought of their target audience and how the campaign was spread across different media: for instance, teenage magazines, the website with its post cards, a TV ad, poster, etc.

Notice also the importance that the Public Health Agency attach to what the target audience thought of their campaign in the comments evaluating the campaign.

Other helpful examples
http://smokefree.nhs.uk/ scroll down to the resources link if you get the first page by error. There are lots of campaigns here with resources attached.

For an older target audience take a look at this campaign against smoking by "Aspire" from Health Scotland.
Aspire poster advert

Anti-bullying campaign
YWCA anti bullying campaign

Friday 15 January 2010

Campaign: early research into three campaigns


For this topic can work alone or in pairs or threes. However, you still need to keep an individual record of your research and work in hard copy and/or on your blogs.

Use your blogs to make diary-like entries which reveal what you are doing at every stage in this topic. We will create a time-line which will lead up to the launch-date of your own campaigns, next week. People who produce professional campaigns do this so they can meet deadlines.

When it the time comes to produce your own campaign you may choose to do a campaign in any area. However, it might save you time to create a campaign on work you have already done for Record and Artefact: the play you produced or the act for the CD cover you researched and made earlier.

For the early, research part of Campaign you need to examine at least three campaigns by different organisations. Your topic may be the same, i.e. the launch of a singer or band's single/CD or live performance.

Use the mini booklet to help you with organising and commenting on your research for your report on three other campaigns.