Education
About Our Education Programs
While committed to presenting the best of independent, documentary, and world cinema, the Jacob Burns Film Center is equally focused on contributing to the international movement to raise a generation of students equipped and inspired to analyze, assess, and communicate using visual and aural media.
Using these essential tools of the 21st century, nearly 60,000 students (ages 8–24) have participated in our original groundbreaking programs since 2001, including See Hear Feel Film, Minds in Motion, Cinemania, Classroom to Screening Room, Unscripted, World Crew, and Digital Storytelling.
Educators have also been deeply involved through professional development and curriculum-writing workshops. The demand for these programs and the support of our community has brought us to this pivotal moment: the opening of the Media Arts Lab, just down the street from the JBFC Theater.
The JBFC’s Media Arts Lab is a lifelong learning community that nurtures intellectual curiosity and creative exploration. Students at the Lab include community members with a creative interest in film, education professionals seeking teaching tools, filmmakers learning new skills, people of all ages creating media, and families connecting through the power of story. We’ll offer classes for beginning and advanced students during the day, after school, in the evenings, and on weekends.
Storytelling is the focus and guiding principle of every Lab program, reaching across all media and throughout all aspects of filmmaking. All our classes share a singular purpose: to help people bring new stories into the world. Engaging in projects grounded in 21st-century audiovisual media, participants will learn to make and understand movies of all kinds while practicing communication, collaboration, problem solving, project management, and risk taking. Each student’s experience will be unique, depending on his/her interests, imagination, and goals. All instructors at the Lab are working professionals and will serve as colleagues, guides, and mentors. Class size is limited to allow for maximal individual attention.
As the Lab becomes the home of all the JBFC’s education initiatives, programs will continue to expand beyond its walls, across the country, and around the world.