THE REEL PICTURE - FILMMAKING IN THE HIGHLANDS

The Reel Picture was a fast-paced introduction to filmmaking for two groups of young refugees and asylum seekers in the Scottish Highlands. This project was delivered in partnership with Eden Court, The Place and Aberlour between October 2025 and January 2026.

Since we established our Compass hub in Inverness last year, our young people in the Highlands have been eager to make films! Thanks to funding from the Scotland Adults Mental Heath and Inverness Common Good, we ran a pilot filmmaking project with two groups of young people in Inverness and Alness in the autumn/winter of 2025.

We worked with 32 young people across two groups: one based in Inverness and one in Alness (with some young people travelling from Invergordan, Tain and Dingwall). Each group met weekly over five weeks, for three workshop sessions exploring all the different elements of filmmaking, one day of filming, and an editing session. Each participant chose from a range of roles including director, writer, camera operator, sound operator, lighting operator and actor.

The two short films made by the groups, Don’t Jump to Conclusions and For Friends were premiered at our screening in Eden Court’s La Scala cinema, to a sold out audience in January 2026. The screening was followed by a Q&A with our Youth Leaders and a panel of young filmmakers from each group. The films have since been screened by Fort William Mountain Festival (February) and Evanton Community Cinema (March), and we are looking forward to bringing them to our London audience this Refugee Week!

Following the success of this pilot project, we are thrilled that we will be sustaining and developing our filmmaking programmes in the Highlands. Thanks to funding from Young Start we will be running our newest programme, Film Futures, over the next three years. Working in Iverness, Alness and Stornoway, we will support young refugees and asylum seekers across the Highlands and Islands to gain skills and confidence, form a community, and have their voices heard, through bespoke creative filmmaking and employability workshops.

We can’t wait to share their films with you!