In friendly clash of two worlds over at the Mary Pickford Institute for Film Education on Venice Boulevard, what is old, dead and buried is blending with the latest in technology to shoot a fresh bolt of energy into previously uninspired students.
At schools and educational centers of all stripes, the Institute seeks to show the curious and the turned-off boys and girls that if they think books are too old-fashioned, here is a new way to grow. In the process, their program aids centers and schools in their fundraising.
Do not be misled by the full name of the organization, as in “for Film Education.” They are not recruiting for show business. . They are trying to develop improved human beings.
Boring Was for Yesterday
Youthful Keith Lawrence, the President and CEO of the Institute who is a pretty interesting chap on his own, says the dynamism of the mobile film classroom they have designed is changing the minds of students who think learning is boring.
The evidence suggests that the rocket-firing creativity of Mr. Lawrence’s expansive mind is indeed making a difference, especially, but not only, with the skeptical.
The Institute’s touring bus — which has plans to go nationwide — is on the order of inviting strictly modern-minded boys and girls to sit down at a technological dinner table.
Perceptions of Senses
Immediately, their senses begin to rev up, involuntarily, as they feast their wandering eyes, their itchy hands and their imaginative minds on the many shiny tools that go into digital media classes.
Armed with cameras and computers, the arrival of a Pickford Institute bus on a school campus may be akin to Christmas morning and glowingly wrapped gifts beneath the tree.
With the children handling all of the equipment, “we stand behind them,” says Mr. Lawrence, “and they learn by doing everything themselves. They learn because we are right there to help them.
Laser-focused on Learning
“In a sense, we don’t care what they do. What we care about is that they learn.”
With the ratio of instructors to students about 1 to 6, no child is in danger of straying off or becoming overlooked.
Spokesperson Diane Cummings said the classroom constitutes a complete mobile digital production unit — cameras, microphones, video and auditing hardware and software, sound recording booth and DVD production gear.
Instructors provided by the Institute guide students through the digital media creation process, whether writing, filming, narrating or film and music editing.
Students at the Controls
Students operate all digital equipment — and “all” is underscored by Mr. Lawrence — that the Mary Pickford Institute brings to campuses around Los Angeles.
The five-year-old Institute designed the concept of Mobile Film Classroom a little less than two years ago, and it is thriving. Says Ms. Cummings: “Our classroom is in such demand that funding for additional classrooms has been secured, and a second roll-out is scheduled for early in the new year.”
Marrying what is old with what is new is percolating into a genius of an idea.
About Authenticity
What does any of this have to do with Ms. Pickford?
Was she just another handy, long-gone celebrity who might be ripe for revival?
Not at all, it turns out.
Mr. Lawrence, hitting his stride in full bloom at midlife, is no random shlepper aimlessly cruising the boulevard.
A successful entrepreneur in several fields since the late 1970s, he was the godson of Ms. Pickford, largely because his father was Ms. Pickford’s legal counsel.
The direct bonding with Ms. Pickford, therefore, is established.
A History of Philanthropy
Mary Pickford, you may not know, is one of the great philanthropists in Los Angeles history as well as a towering star of silent films a century ago.
In Hollywood she is enshrined for helping to found United Artists in 1919 before the film community was terribly sophisticated. In other neighborhoods of Los Angeles, Ms. Pickford is honored as a principal founder of the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills and as a founder of the Jewish Home for the Aging.
She has been gone for nearly 30 years. The , entertainment community may not have realized this because the generous years of her private/philanthropic life outlasted her film career by many decades.
Her Presence
The Mary Pickford Institute headquarters, at the corner of National Boulevard and Venice, the nerve center of this oven-fresh concept in learning, is a miniature museum of Pickfordiana, which may serve to motivate employees while never letting them forget where they are.
Talk about all-Pickford-all-the-time.
The headquarters house a cache of rare graphic records of Ms. Pickford’s motion picture days and later life.
Once a visitor sits down with the low-key, businesslike Mr. Lawrence, following a screening or two in a darkened setting, the experience turns cerebral, philosophical and visionary.
Exploring Motivation and Mission
“Our mission,” he explains, “is to increase peoples’ self-esteem, self-worth by giving them a voice, by letting them know that who they are and what they have to say is worth something. There is purpose in what they do.
“The trouble is, we are educating our youth today the way it was done 40, 50 years ago. We are not really reaching anyone in schools because of that.
“Our goal is to reach people, to reach where they are, where their interests are and where the world is today — and that is through digital media, through YouTube, MySpace and throughout the internet.
“People are not reading newspapers. They are reading websites to get information.
“We need to start focusing on how to re-educate the public, not just students, about how we are learning.”
For information, see marypickford.com.
(To be continued)
