Honour Yesterday, Inspire Tomorrow
Create Studios celebrate powerful young voices with Making My Mark
Create Studios have always been passionate about growing the next generation of diverse digital creatives. We partnered with English Heritage over the lockdown of 2020 to invite diverse young people aged 16 to 25 years old from across England to celebrate their personal identity and heritage through digital media production; Making My Mark came into being to inspire, challenge and redefine what heritage means.
Short films of unique heritage stories and identities
The project launched in 2021 when eleven young producers embarked on a journey to explore their own unique heritage stories and identities, mentored by Create Studios. These stories were then developed into inspiring short films by the young producers themselves.
Film screening at the British Film Institute
These first films went on to inspire others across the country through a National Open Call for young people to share their heritage stories from Spring this year. July’s screening event at the British Film Institute was a culmination of both the mentored productions and the first responses to that callout, which then toured nationally as a curated digital installation in English Heritage properties and key media partners.
Big congrats to our featured films and producers
Mentored Making My Mark Producers
Black Tea: Reneque Samuels
My Mother’s Mother: Asena Nour
It’s your story now: Paris H.W
Heritage: Jenni Potter
Best of Both: Worlds Harry Burbidge
The Space In Between: Izzy A’isha Johnson
Medica_ed: J Frank
Neither Nor: Isabella Wimmer
The Cailleach and the Moon: Freya Hannan-Mills
Is Black a Colour? Brioni Farren
Mixed Feelings: Nozomi Tolworthy
National callout Producers
Chains: Ellis Evason
My Life from my Heritage: Isabelle Harvey
Prove them Wrong: Tom Giles
Making My Mark: Rowan Archer
Personal Identity: Ellis Latham-Jones
Video Star: Ellie Brown
Semley: Ellie Melrose
The Grand Life Experience :Iain Tyler
Phyllis: Joel Wakeley
This is Me: Charlie McCarthy
Overdraft: Morgan Thomas
A Woman Is: Lola Rowe
All the featured films and future contributions were collated into an extraordinary digital archive that celebrates diversity, individuality and heritage in 2022 through the medium of film.
Visit the website: https://makingmymark.createstudios.org.uk/
I love the Making my Mark films, which are only small in terms of their running time, and personal in so far as they connect to the common ground in all of us. These are conversational, inquiring films about identity, about race, about gender, about our place in the world. Looking at the histories that we carry with us, and seeing how those histories interact with the here and now. The young filmmakers here are asking the same basic question, which is ‘Who am I?’ They approach it in such a way which includes us all, which leads to a still wider question, which is ‘Who are we?’ …as individuals, as a people, as a country.
Xan Brooks, Freelance Writer & Broadcaster for The Guardian