My portfolio of video and print projects relevant to debate education

Up for Debate programme for the PiXL Schools Group

The Up for Debate programme was written, designed and produced predominantly by me, in collaboration with Debbie Newman from the Noisy Classroom.

It has helped thousands of young people in over 600 state schools across England and Wales develop debating skills. It provides teachers and students with a comprehensive suite of print and video resources, enabling them to start debating quickly, and then to develop their skills over time.

Promotional film

I shot, edited and animated this video in the programme’s first year, to explain the benefits of it to teachers of English in PiXL’s network of state schools across the country.

PDF & print resources

The viewer below contains excerpts from the core handbook and scheme of work for Year 9s, written mostly by me, and designed entirely by me in Adobe InDesign. This was supplemented by three further books, and a suite of 30 videos running at over 3 hours in total. I also helped manage and deliver a parallel programme of live training events for teachers and competition days for pupils. These were held at a range of venues around the UK, from the University of Sunderland and University of Northampton in the north and Midlands, to UCL and the University of Bath in the south.

Two films featuring Professor Ivan O'Pinion and Hugh de Syde

I also appeared in the films! My two characters of Professor Ivan O’Pinion and Hugh de Syde were a cost-efficient way for me to create a large number of educational films on a low budget. In all of these, I did literally everything: writing, self-taping, editing, simple but effective animations. They also give an idea the fun and exciting way that I engage with young people in primary schools and early secondary education.

The second video is from our series of ‘stimulus videos’ which introduce students quickly to a topic before they start to prepare. These use some basic AfterEffects to put Ivan and Hugh in a TV studio for their news show On That Point. Produced in 2018, this video was for the motion “This House believes that Elizabeth II should be the last monarch of the United Kingdom”.

Lecture for 16-18 year olds on 'Organisation' in public speaking

This is the second in a series of four videos that I made for the Inspire programme at St John’s College, Oxford University during Covid. The aim was to help them to create and develop their own public speeches on topics that mattered to them.

SeeHearTeach CPD brochure

This brochure of my pre-Covid CPD offer for teachers gives an overview of communications training programmes that I have developed and delivered for fellow educators. It also exemplifies how I market them to colleagues and professional networks. My branding work for SeeHearTeach used clear copywriting, bold colours and clean design to convey the wider ethos of the organisation.

Syllabus for the International Oratory Festival

The International Oratory Festival is an online celebration of speech and drama that takes place each May. I helped launch the programme back in 2022, including creating the branding and a lot of the syllabus content. I was also the key administrator and one of the judges for both the 2023 and 2024 festivals.

Promotional films for organisations and schools

I’m expert at capturing the key selling points of different organisations in promotional videos.

Greenwich Free School

A film which mixes footage of exciting teaching and learning with interviews with students, giving a really clear overview of this school’s unique ethos and many strengths in just 4 minutes.

London Symphony Chorus

I am adept at both short-form and long-form messaging. The first of these two films for one of the world’s leading symphony choruses is a short and high-energy 60-second promo. The second is a longer exploration of what it’s like to work with the chorus, with more of a documentary feel.

SeeHearVote: election debates / hustings livestreamed entirely by young people from Croydon North and St Helen's North

My core work in debating in schools is very low-tech, focusing on using pupils’ minds and powers of conversation. But I also love introducing young people to the exciting world of live TV broadcasting. In my live TV projects, debating and public speaking skills are complemented by a rich set of real-life team building, leadership and technical scenarios.

These young broadcasters from St Joseph’s RC College in Croydon hadn’t engaged much with politics before the Monday morning of our 5-day project. Their transformation into a political broadcast team by the Friday morning was thrilling to behold. I didn’t manage to fit all the format ideas I had into this short week. But the key thing was that, by Friday, myself (as project director and supervising the control room for the broadcast), Tom (on the studio floor) and Amanda (in charge of sound) were, as the professionals, able to let the entire proceedings be operated and run hands-on entirely by the young people, with us in supervisory roles.

By the second week in St Helen’s, were were able to add some more features to the form, including pre-filmed VTs on each topic area to be covered in the debate, and sit-down “why did you go into politics?” chats which gave individualised roles to as many of the 30 young people as possible, and also really helped show that politicians are real people, despite the way that the media or disaffected adults often portray them!

Me in my "professional presenter" mode

This is a video that I made about “the purposes and keys to success of an opera education programme” for a job application process back in 2012. I’m very used to presenting professionally to groups of other professionals, both at conferences and in smaller meetings, or online. This video shows the enthusiastic clarity with which I can talk about topics that I really care about.

Online Tour of the National Theatre

Produced in the earliest days of web video (2008-9), the Online Tour enabled young people and adult audiences to explore my colleagues’ skills and storylines through immersive non-linear narratives. The innovative Flash-based interface and rich layers of content led to my team and me receiving a BAFTA nomination for ‘TV Craft: Interactive Creative Contribution’.

Although it’s not as relevant to debate education as some of the other videos above, it underlines the creative and pioneering approach that I take to all my work.