Lights, Camera…Inclusion!

Written by Vee Ladwa, director at FILMSCOPE CIC, a community film club and cinema that engages with the local community through the power of cinema and delivers stop motion animation workshops to schools and the wider community.

Since co-launching Filmscope CIC and piloting Inanimatorz and Inanimatorz GO! projects for the London Borough of Culture Awards in 2020, it’s been a joy to bring the accessibility and creative power of stop motion animation to children and adults across my local community of Brent, London.

Following my previous HUE blog post back in 2023, Filmscope has continued to bring stop motion animation to schools across Brent, including Chalkhill Primary School, Kingsbury Green Primary School and Preston Manor All-Through School, as well as running holiday and summer sessions at local community centres and venues in the borough. It’s been wonderful for the team to see the kids from all ages experiment, problem-solve, and express themselves through animation whilst utilising the versatile cameras from HUE.

The HUE HD cameras have become our trusted companions in nearly all of these workshops. It’s really allowed participants to animate in a tactile, hands-on way that is intuitive and creative for their own individual animating styles and needs.

Notable Sessions from the Past Few Years

Chalkhill Primary School

One of Filmscope’s earliest funded stop motion projects, STOPMO YO!, took place at Chalkhill Primary School with Spanish teacher, Ms. Irene Mallek. Before the pandemic, Ms. Mallek would take students to Spain each year — but with travel suddenly halted, due to Covid restrictions, she wanted to recreate the experience through animation instead.

Working in small groups, the children designed different scenes from their “virtual Spanish trip”, recording their own voices and bringing the story to life through stop motion. The final film was screened in an assembly to the school and parents — a moment the children, and Filmscope, were incredibly proud of!

This session was our first real insight into the benefits of stop motion for children with SEN also. For those that were more visual and kinaesthetic learners, the set up really worked well. Teachers and parents told us they noticed improvements in focus, patience, and confidence, and that some children even began experimenting with animation at home, which was a joy! Often we might bump into one of the kids from previous sessions and they would proudly show us their new animation. Exactly the kind of outcomes we were hoping for.

Check out the behind the scenes process of making the stop motion animation with our Spanish language pupils at Chalkhill Primary School!

Kingsbury Green Primary School — d/Deaf Group Sessions

Inspired by the success at Chalkhill, we began working with a group of d/Deaf students at Kingsbury Green Primary School. Our focus here was visual communication, sensory learning, and giving the d/Deaf children ways to express themselves creatively without relying on spoken language. The HUE setup is brilliantly Plug and Play, while the flexible neck allows the children to position the camera anywhere — over paper cut-outs, LEGO builds, clay, drawings, or layered mixed-media scenes.One of the highlights was when the children took photos of themselves and turned them into superheroes. With their printed poses cut out, they designed costumes, added colourful effects and animated their characters together in collaborative scenes. The happiness they felt seeing “mini versions” of themselves animated on screen was priceless!

Framing the Future

The success of these stop motion projects across Brent has inspired Filmscope to expand the inclusive animation sessions to after school clubs and even further — giving more children who are d/Deaf, neurodivergent, SEN, or, as we like to say.. .those that are simply wonderfully curious, the chance to explore storytelling through animation.

Adults also have the opportunity to learn and explore stop motion animation at ANIMATIKZ – 1 to 1 sessions with me at the studio in Wembley Park, once a week! Whether a beginner or with experience, these guided sessions are a great way to get into something new. In a world that’s seemingly moving digital and less tactile, let us bring movement to the imagination!!

More information can be found here: https://classbento.co.uk/stop-motion-animation-course-harrow

Stop motion continues to show us that storytelling goes far beyond words. With tools like those from HUE, creativity becomes accessible, visual, and joyfully collaborative — exactly as it should be! A special thank you to Ruth at HUE HQ, who has been immensely supportive throughout this stop motion journey. Thanks to her, we’ve received the newly released HUE Clay, and the excitement from the children so far has been…LOUD!!! They love the colours, the feel, and the endless possibilities — and I cannot wait to see the curious characters and worlds that will be created in 2026!