Month: April 2015

Headteachers shun art in their schools due to worry about exam table rankings

Lord Puttnam Too many “bad” heads are shunning the arts in their schools because they are worried about their exam league table rankings, according to Oscar-winning film producer David Puttnam.

Lord Puttnam, a former education adviser to the Blair government, wants education standards watchdog Ofsted to place more weight on arts provision during school inspections.

“I know it doesn’t at the moment,” he said in an interview withThe Independent. “ It might just be a footnote to a report: the arts provision is excellent.

“Really, a school ought to be awarded outstanding status if it has excellent performance in the arts and is just achieving decent results in other areas.”

Lord Puttnam added: “For good or ill, arts provision in schools really relies on the ambition of individual headteachers.

Activities Education

Leadership, engagement and trust with Lord Puttnam

Lord David Puttnam

Over 140 joined a cosy and intimate room at BAFTA to hear from Lord David Puttnam.

'The tasks you set yourself cannot be achieved in a single lifetime', he started out saying. With a rallying call to action he spoke eloquently and passionately about how democracy is not a spectator sport. He argued that he felt we have returned to the levels of inequality last felt in 1914, which is a sad state of affairs to be in.

Speaking at length about trust, he said democracy is about passing on a public trust. 'Our tabloid papers carry about as much news as Tit Bits paper [when I was growing up] and are about as reliable.'

Activities Film

David Puttnam lends support to Keighley’s RATMA film festival

David Puttnam at Keighley

David Puttnam is supporting Keighley’s RATMA international film festival.

He has filmed a special message to play before the festival’s gala screening of winning entries this month.

Lord Puttnam’s big-screen appearance at Keighley Picture House will launch a major expansion of the already-successful annual RATMA day.

He is allowing organisers to screen his own debut on film, a video for Paul McCartney’s solo single Maybe I’m Amazed which was filmed in the 1970s.

Lord Puttnam, who spearheaded the revival of the British movie industry in the 1980s, is the first of several film-world notables who have pledged support for RATMA.

Activities Education

Kealkil students welcome ‘digital ambassador’ Lord Puttnam

David Puttnam talks technology with Cappabue pupils Hannah Campbell and Bonnie Dale

TO the delight of 29 movie-mad students at Cappabue National School, Lord David Puttnam gave generously of his time when he visited Kealkil last Friday to unveil their Digital School of Distinction Award.

Lord Puttnam, who is Ireland’s Digital Ambassador, took a genuine interest in the pupils’ and their digital projects, some of which were honoured with national and international film awards.

Student Jack Desmond, who hails from Whiddy Island, presented Lord Puttnam with a copy of Cappabue’s latest short film ‘Trasna na dTonnta’, which was filmed on location on Whiddy.

Original article.

Activities Future Skills

Lord Puttnam: Europe Digital Single Market Essential

Renowned film-maker Lord Puttnam has called for a European digital single market that retains scope for territorial licensing to boost cultural diversity and consumer choice and warned against an inflexible approach to release windows.

Puttnam, President of Film Distributors’ Association (FDA), made the comments in a keynote address at an FDA event for the UK film industry in London.

He also urged all branches of the film industry to embrace innovation as the digital revolution continues “at blistering speed”.

Activities Education

David Puttnam: Why I swapped filmmaking for education

After an outstanding career in the film industry, David Puttnam left the entertainment world behind to take on the challenge of reforming education.

Activities Future Skills

Lord Puttnam sees EU digital strategy shift

David Puttnam at FDA

FDA president hopeful of less seismic EU digital reform.

Labour Lord and former film producer David Puttnam is hopeful that controversial EU plans to introduce a Digital Single Market will not include the outlawing of geo-blocking, as feared by many in the creative industries.

Speaking to ScreenDaily in his capacity as president of the Film Distributors’ Association, Lord Puttnam yesterday said that cultural lobbying groups could still have a significant impact on policy.

“The Commission will be driven towards the cultural diversity aspect by Francoise Hollande and Angela Merkel, because the film groups around both of those leaders are quite powerful,” said the Oscar-winningChariots of Fire producer.

Puttnam cited an interview with EU digital commissioner Gunther Oettinger in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper on Monday (March 30) as evidence of a softening approach.

Activities Media

New press regulation regime is ‘business as usual’, says Lord Puttnam

Lord David Puttnam Labour peer and film producer Lord Puttnam has slammed the lack of progress on press regulation and called the regulatory regime under the Independent Press Standards Organisation “business as usual”.

Delivering the inaugural Media Trust annual lecture, the Chariots of Fire producer, who was also deputy chairman of Channel 4 until 2012, said David Cameron had “bottled” his chance to take on press barons over regulation.

He said that in the two and a half years since Sir Brian Leveson published his report on press regulation, “no progress of consequence, certainly nothing that would signal a change in our culture or compassion, is in any way evident”.

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