The NFB Goes West to Calgary, Alberta!
The NFB Goes West to Calgary, Alberta!
By Renée Lottridge, NFB Education Specialist
On October 21, 2012, Tey Cottingham, Advisor, Educational Programs, Penny Rampado, Sales and Market Development Officer, and I arrived at the Blackfoot Inn in Calgary, Alberta, to prepare for the Educational Media Marketplace sales conference. In addition to 20 centimetres of fresh snow, we were greeted by almost a hundred delegates who had come to this two-and-a-half-day event to preview and evaluate the newest bilingual film releases from Canadian media distributors across the country.
The NFB booth was constantly buzzing with activity; with 90 new films, countless interactive projects, PixStop demos and à la carte CAMPUS workshops, there was never a dull moment. We received extremely exciting feedback from the conference: 8 of our films were given a “highly rated” evaluation by multiple EMM educators. A Sea Turtle Story, Big Mouth, Waseteg, Wild Life, Petra’s Poem, Pink Ribbons, Inc., Big Drive and United States of Africa all got rave reviews.
Later that week, Penny and I set out to meet 20 librarians from the University of Calgary. They were incredibly excited to hear about all of the educational resources available to them through CAMPUS, especially the pedagogical guides and easy-to-use playlist and chapter creation tools.
Afterwards, I traveled to St-Albert the Great School to give a two-and-a-half-hour pixillation workshop and present a screening program for 22 Grade 5 students. They really enjoyed participating in the animation workshop, learning about the NFB’s history, watching films from our collection and creating their own animated shorts in class. Even the principal stopped by to catch some of the action!
