White space, blank class

Abstract

Using filmmaking and media practice techniques in education can be a powerful tool for approaching young students, make them more excited about school, help them have fun through learning and express themselves through art, work with their classmates as a team and enrich them with skills that can be very useful for them both now and in the future. This idea gave birth to ‘White Space, Blank class’ project. Why ‘White Space’? Audio Visual Arts department is placed in the buildings of the former mental asylum of Corfu. This fact provides us with the ‘ideal space’ from which the pedagogical sufficiency program students can draw inspiration and create. Especially nowadays with the COVID-19 pandemic, the great lockdown imposes empty classrooms (blank class), no teachers, no students, and ‘white noise’ is the only one being ubiquitous. The main methodology that we are going to use is ethnomediaology, born by StoryLab. Ethnomediaology is an interdisciplinary approach inspired by practices in Ethnomusicology and Autoethnography. StoryLab core value is the democratization of media and that includes the use of open and free software available to everyone and shooting with mobile and compact cameras. This paper will present the full teaching plan. The idea is to provide the teachers with full schedule, tools and our experience in order to approach education and teaching especially in the troubled years of COVID-19 pandemic.