Lorraine Smith
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Lorraine is a TV Producer with specialisms in community engagement and teaching film & TV Production/digital media skills to young people; excelling at developing innovative digital projects & activities with a computing, technology & creative focus.
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Following her career in finance, Lorraine diversified, studying psychology and SEND in depth, re-training to work holistically with families and children across Key Stages 1 to 4, building a thriving tutoring business. She has successfully set up award winning children’s digital news clubs in multiple Primary schools, enabling children to lead their own digital newspapers and TV channels where they could explore communication and use their voice in various ways, including photography and film. This facilitated many exciting opportunities for children in various digital formats, which were supported by Adobe, the BBC, children's authors, the London Borough of Bexley, artists from Aardman Animations and national children's newspaper First News, leading to many children having their writing published and talents recognised locally and nationally.
Following this, pupils contributed digital media from their homes to create an online news programme. This documented their learning through the pandemic and achieved the First News Newspaper of the Year 2020 ‘Innovative News Project Award’. Other initiatives included the pupils using Adobe inDesign and Photoshop to produce their own digital content, winning the 'Innovative Use of Adobe Creative Cloud LGfL Digital Excellence Award 2020' and a £1000 prize for their school. Lorraine previously taught TV & Film Production in a number of schools, progressing to become a Specialist in ICT Development at an outstanding primary school, integrating innovative technologies across the curriculum.
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Lorraine & Peter co-founded their independent not for profit company, end2end TV CIC in January 2021. Lorraine is a qualified Mental Health First Aider [MHFA England] and Arts Award Adviser, able to assess all five levels of these nationally recognized qualifications (equivalent to GCSE – AS Level standards). end2end TV is a successful Arts Award centre with a 100% success rate up to Gold Level 3 Standard, now based at Hurstmere School.
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In early 2023, Lorraine & Peter were successful in their application for a £153,682.00 grant from the National Heritage Lottery Fund for the ‘Through Our Eyes Project’, working with school pupils to make history documentaries.
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This funding enabled end2end TV to work with pupils from Year 4 to Year 9 at four schools to research, write, and film documentaries about their schools. Pupils at Hurstmere Secondary, Bexley Grammar, Burnt Oak Junior and Old Bexley CofE Primary Schools, were able to produce films that were premiered at a grand launch at Hall Place, Bexley in February 2024.
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A highly successful digital interactive exhibition followed this at The Stables Gallery, Hall Place, which both the BBC and Sky TV featured on their news programmes. It was the very first time Hall Place had hosted a digital exhibition and we were thrilled it exceeded normal footfall numbers for the venue and boosted revenue for local businesses.
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The legacy films created by the pupils have been donated to Bexley Archives for others to access.
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​For further information about this unique, ground-breaking project please visit: www.throughoureyes.uk
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