Jonathan: December 2009 Archives

Short version: we didn’t win.

Longer version: That was fun!

We had a wonderful time in Berlin — we’ll try to post some photos over the next few days — and the MEDEA Awards were a terrific way of bringing together a disparate group of projects and people. We’d never have realised we had anything in common until somebody put us in the same room and told us we did. I’m extremely grateful to the organisers for sparking all sorts of interesting and potentially useful conversations.

The entirely worthy winners were:

• Innovation Award: Daisy & Drago, an animation developed by a class of 6 year-olds in a Turkish school. A wonderful, mad achievement led by a brilliantly enthusiastic teacher.
• Special Jury Award: Eyes on the Skies by the European Southern Observatory. The jury paid particular credit to the high quality of the video, but the way the film has been distributed is at least as impressive. A big, glossy, but very well-executed project. Also, Lars from the ESO was hilarious.
• European Collaboration Award: Traditions Across Europe, a comparative project encompassing 22 schools, led by a school in Italy. A huge achievement for a tiny project, driven entirely by goodwill and tenacity — a great example of how much can be achieved if you just roll your sleeves up and get on with it.
• Overall MEDEA Award: Know It All, by Childnet International. The other UK nominee, this is a very complete and well thought-through set of modules about online safety, aimed at quite young children. Fun, witty, colourful, and well-paced animations deliver clear messages.

It’s a cliché, but we really are delighted to move in such circles, and it was an honour to reach the final stage. Our sincere congratulations to the winners, and to the other finalists.

Normally, it’s us giving out the awards to celebrate the very best films you send in. However, SciCast — the whole project — is itself up for an award. We’re one of eight finalists for the MEDEA Awards 2009.

MEDEA is a pan-European organisation that ‘recognises excellence and creativity in media in education’, so we’re utterly thrilled to be recognised by them. Katie and I are jetting off to Berlin at the end of the week for the Awards event, and to meet the other finalists, who range from an astronomy project from the European Southern Observatory to an Italian schools’ project about local traditions across the continent.

Here’s more about the finalists, about the 2009 Awards, and about the MEDEA organisation in general.

Of course, we wouldn’t have got anywhere without all the terrific support and particularly films contributed by so many of you over the last few years. Reaching this stage of the MEDEA Awards is a wonderful recognition of the imaginative, insightful, and plain crazy work done by SciCasters across the UK and Ireland.

Yay us: all of us.