MEMBERSHIP
Imaginarium Film Academy brings together young people from around the world to learn acting, writing and filmmaking whilst developing their own creative voice and making extraordinary things together.
Imaginarium Film Academy brings together young people from around the world to learn acting, writing and filmmaking whilst developing their own creative voice and making extraordinary things together.
Our students are actors, writers, filmmakers, directors and storytellers. Often, they are still discovering which of those things they might become.
We give them the space, skills and community to find out.
MULTIDISCIPLINARY
APPROACH TO LEARNING
A great performance needs a great story. A great screenplay needs actors who can bring it to life. A director needs to understand both. And every filmmaker needs to know how to communicate an idea and bring other people with them. That’s why every Imaginarium student learns across the creative process...
SCREEN ACTING Developing truthful, imaginative performance for camera through character, text, improvisation, emotional connection and professional screen technique.
SCREENWRITING Learning how ideas become stories, stories become scenes and characters become people we care about.
FILMMAKING Exploring visual storytelling, directing, camera, composition, editing and how creative choices shape what an audience experiences.
CREATIVE LEADERSHIP Learning how to develop an idea, communicate it, collaborate with others and gradually take greater responsibility for bringing creative work to life.
Together, these disciplines create young artists who understand the whole creative process.
THE IMAGINARIUM YEAR
The academic year follows a deliberate creative journey
term one TOOLS & CRAFT
First, we build the toolkit. Students develop strong foundations across acting, writing and filmmaking while experimenting with new techniques and discovering different ways to tell stories. The emphasis is on curiosity, craft and developing a shared creative language.
term two COLLABORATION & CREATION
Then we put those skills to work. Students move into extended projects, developing work over time and collaborating across disciplines. They write, perform, direct and film. They begin taking greater ownership of both their own ideas and the work of the ensemble.
term three PLAY, VOICE & IMAGINATION
Once students have the tools, we encourage them to play with them. Term Three is about experimentation, imagination and discovering an individual creative voice. What interests you? What do you want to say? What kind of stories do you want to tell?
As the year progresses, ideas, skills and creative relationships begin travelling between the students’ regular Academy sessions and our in person filmmaking experiences.
Work can begin in one space, develop in another and return transformed as students move between training, experimentation and production.
THE ENSEMBLE
At the heart of Imaginarium is the ensemble. Our students become each other’s actors, writers, directors, filmmakers, collaborators and creative sounding boards. They learn how to make somebody else’s idea stronger and how to disagree creatively. They learn to listen, lead and support, while developing the courage to take a risk in front of people they trust.
As students grow, their responsibility within the ensemble grows with them. A younger student might arrive with an extraordinary idea and a more experienced student might help shape it. Another might write. Someone might perform. Someone else might discover that what they really love is being behind the camera.
Our students come from different countries, cultures, schools and backgrounds, but they are connected by curiosity, imagination and a desire to make things. Through creating together, genuine friendships form and travel with them through weekly training, collaborative projects, filmmaking experiences and the years they spend growing through the Academy.
We believe community makes better artists. Creativity requires courage, and courage becomes much easier when you know the people around you want you to succeed.
Imaginarium is an ensemble in which every young person has something to contribute and space to grow.
ONE COMMUNITY
DIFFERENT PLACES
Imaginarium is an international creative community. Throughout the year, our students meet regularly in small groups to train, create and collaborate across acting, screenwriting, filmmaking and creative leadership.
Geography doesn’t determine who they can create with.
A student in London might write with someone in Ibiza, act opposite someone in Switzerland or develop a film idea with a collaborator somewhere entirely different.
They are a part of a creative community that grows together over time.
Throughout the year, we bring those communities together physically through studio sessions, productions, filmmaking experiences and international residencies. This is where something powerful happens! Students don’t arrive as strangers meeting at a workshop. They already know one another. They understand how their collaborators think and work. They share a creative language.
They arrive ready to make something.
The work developed throughout the Academy feeds naturally into these physical experiences. Skills deepen, ideas travel with them and, as productions approach, students begin stepping into the acting roles and creative positions they are ready to take on.
They learn together, create together and the work grows with them.
GROW WITH US
Imaginarium is designed to grow with a young person. A seven year old might begin by discovering how much fun it is to invent a character or tell a story with a camera.
As they grow, the craft deepens.
They begin understanding performance, structure and visual language. They develop opinions about the work they love and begin discovering what they want their own work to say.
Eventually, they may take significant creative responsibility within productions, undertake advanced qualifications, develop original projects or begin working professionally.
We don’t expect a young person to know at ten, twelve or even sixteen exactly where their creativity will take them.
Our job is to give them enough craft, experience and opportunity to discover it for themselves.
CREATIVE LEADERSHIP
There is an old model of creative training that says:
Become excellent at one thing, wait for an opportunity and hope somebody chooses you.
We want our students to understand another possibility:
Have an idea. Develop the craft to explore it. Find brilliant people to collaborate with and learn how to turn that idea into something real.
That doesn’t mean doing everything alone. Quite the opposite! Creative leadership is about recognising other people’s strengths, communicating your ideas clearly, listening when somebody else has a better one and knowing how to bring people together around something worth making.
As our students grow through Imaginarium, they gradually take greater ownership of the creative process. They learn that they don’t have to wait for somebody else to give them permission to create.
Whether they eventually become actors, screenwriters, directors, filmmakers, producers or follow an entirely different path, that confidence and resourcefulness travels with them.
We aren’t simply preparing young people to enter the creative industries as they exist today.
We are preparing them to help shape what comes next...
THE ACADEMY
JUNIORS | 7 to 11 yrs
Our youngest students meet twice weekly and develop their craft across screen acting and cinematic arts. They explore acting, improvisation, writing, filmmaking and visual storytelling in an imaginative, age appropriate environment fused with movement and fun!
The emphasis is on curiosity, confidence, ensemble and developing strong creative foundations.
SENIORS | 12 to 18 yrs
Senior students meet three times weekly and develop their craft across:
Screen Acting | Screenwriting | Filmmaking
Creative leadership runs throughout all three disciplines, with students taking increasing responsibility as their craft, confidence and independence develop.
MEMBERSHIP
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Imaginarium is an integrated Academy membership rather than a collection of individual classes. Learning across disciplines makes stronger artists, while training consistently with the same creative community develops the ensemble from which our projects and productions grow.
Membership Includes
- Regular Academy training across the student’s creative pathway
- Membership of a small international creative community
- Professional licences for Milanote, Canva and ShotDeck
- Ongoing creative development and progression
- Priority access to Academy events, productions and international filmmaking experiences
In person events and international residencies are booked separately.
Membership runs throughout the Academy year and fees can be paid annually or monthly by Direct Debit.
DEVELOP YOUR CRAFT
FIND YOUR PEOPLE DISCOVER WHAT YOU CAN MAKE TOGETHER...
We want our students to leave Imaginarium with real craft. To understand how to build a character, work with text and give a truthful performance for camera.
- To know how stories work and why some make us feel something while others don’t.
- To understand the language of film and how performance, writing, directing, camera and editing come together to shape what an audience experiences.
- We want them to know how to take an idea and make it better. How to practise, experiment, take direction and keep working when something doesn’t land the first time.
- We want them to become brave performers, thoughtful storytellers and increasingly capable young filmmakers.
- To know how to work with people who think differently from them.
- How to contribute to somebody else’s idea as generously as they develop their own.
- How to take creative risks.
- How to lead when it is their turn to lead and support when somebody else has something brilliant to offer.
- How to turn imagination into something real.
