Th!s is Our Chance
August 31, 2020Film Festival
Lindsay, Alex, and myself – Helsinki, November 2020
One of the educators I met while in Helsinki, Finland in 2018 while attending the HundrED Summit was Alex Bell who is the founder and director of Portland Education. One of the first questions I asked Alex was, why would a guy from the UK name his consulting business ‘Portland Education’? I quickly learned that he had gone to school at USM in Gorham and loved Maine so much that he wanted to honor his time spent in our beautiful state, hence, the name. After the summit we stayed in touch with Alex. The ‘we’ is my colleague, Lindsay Pinchbeck, who I traveled to Helsinki with as Ambassadors.
For one of the projects this year Alex teamed up with volunteers, educators, and organizations in the US create the world’s first free online film festival about how to confront, examine, reimagine and create our education ecosystem. Alex says: “If you’ve got kids, are a kid or care about the bigger picture of education in our society, then you really are going to want to watch.” The film festival will include some amazing and beautiful films all about young people and education.Th!S is Our Chance film festival runs October 6-27, 2000. Sign up at THIS LINK.
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
https://www.facebook.com/OurChanceFilms
https://twitter.com/OurChanceFilms
https://www.instagram.com/ourchancefilms/
Alex promises a family bucket of popcorn if you sign up to attend TH!S IS OUR CHANCE film festival.
me arts ed 
Argy, you write like a dream and, like me, you dream big for education and for young people the world over.
You are absolutely right.
Portland, Maine, my time at USM and volunteering at schools there in the 80s was my first time properly immersed in a culture and education different from my own.
That hugely positive and formative experience sowed the seeds for the rest of my life’s work.
I now coach school leaders in the UK and internationally in ensuring they dream big in their vision for their school and create a strategy and culture that is world-class.
Three years ago, I decided to put my money where my mouth is make a film setting out how education could, and should, be. https://vimeo.com/256825814?ref=em-share.
Filming for the complete documentary continues and, when finished, will include the best examples of impactful education innovation globally, that gives a glimpse of this hopeful future.
On the basis of the film, I was invited to join film makers and pioneering education organisations in the US to imagine and create http://www.Our-Chance.com.
It has been a privilege and pleasure to, once again, immerse myself in probably the most important project of my career about the most pressing needs of our time: An education system that confronts our past, examines our present and reimagines and creates our future.
Argy – If that’s not worth all your readers signing up for and spreading the word today, then I don’t know what is.
I hope you will all join me at the watch parties we’ll be organising and as well as popcorn, let’s order from Gorham House of Pizza. Probably the best in the world, if I remember correctly.
http://linkedin.com/in/alex-bell-frsa-fcct-bb9031b9