Riverside Trust

Documentary following students through a year of alternative provision

Riverside Trust runs alternative provision for young people who have found mainstream school hard. The trust wanted to show commissioners, families and its own staff what a year in its settings really looks like, without turning students into case studies or reducing their stories to a before and after. We spent a school year alongside three students, filming a few days each half term, and made a documentary the students were proud to put their names to.

Services

Documentary film
Consent and safeguarding planning
Interviews
Short edits for commissioners

A student practising braiding on a training head in a vocational classroom.

Consent came first, and it kept coming.

Every student, parent or carer and key worker agreed the plan before we filmed a frame, and we checked in again before each visit. Students could say no to any scene on the day, and two of them did. We filmed with a crew of two, used small cameras and natural light, and never took footage in a lesson without the teacher's say. The film feels calm and close because nobody was performing for us.

Students working in a hair and beauty training room, seen past a row of training heads.

One film, three versions, each for a different room.

The full documentary runs to fourteen minutes and premiered at the trust's annual conference. We also cut a four-minute version for local authority commissioners and a ninety-second film for the trust website and social. Each edit keeps the students' own words at the centre. The trust now shows the short film at every admissions meeting, and staff tell us it answers questions that used to take half an hour to explain.