Students Address Global Challenges Through GEMS Education and Sony’s Film-Making Competition

Press release

Published May 3rd, 2018 - 08:09 GMT

The workshop took place in GEMS Al Barsha National School with 100 students – 20 teams across 12 GEMS Education schools.

In an effort to create awareness and address the world’s most pressing issues, GEMS Education partnered with Sony Middle East and Africa, and CreatorUp – a YouTube Certified leader in global digital media education – to host a film making competition open to all GEMS Education schools in the UAE.

The competition’s theme is for students to convey their ‘Innovation Story’ in a format of their choice – comedy, documentary or a fictional universe. The films’ focus on how their group, school or community will address global challenges and pressing issues in the society.

Throughout the competition, CreatorUp provided a full day workshop and on-going support to the shortlisted teams in storytelling and production techniques. The workshop took place in GEMS Al Barsha National School with 100 students – 20 teams across 12 GEMS Education schools – and teachers learning and creating their behind-the-scenes footage.

Sony had provided all teams with their handycams to create their films. They will provide the winning team with AED 10,000 as prize money and all students of the top three teams will receive AED1,000 vouchers each towards Sony products.

Rajnish Kautia, Digital Imaging Marketing Manager, Sony MEA, said: “Sony is delighted to partner with GEMS Education and share knowledge with the participating students and their mentors about our latest Digital imaging products and technologies, especially the 4K Video cameras. We are overwhelmed by the response to this contest and the keen interest and involvement in the Visual Storytelling Workshops we conducted. We are certainly looking forward to some really outstanding short film entries on 30th April 2018, the contest deadline,” said

The winning teams will be announced at the GEMS Innovation Awards on May 8.

Background Information

GEMS Education

In 1959, two teachers, KS Varkey and his wife Mariamma, arrived in Dubai.

At the time, Dubai was a burgeoning trade centre on the Arabian Gulf. The Varkey family had left Kerala, India to seek a better life for their family. What they found was a real need to educate children arriving in the city from around the world.

Their son, Sunny, added a visionary’s ambition to a practitioner's experience. From simple roots in a family of teachers, GEMS Education, is today an international company with schools and education services across the Middle East. We still share the same mission - to provide a quality education to everyone.