Our Keeping it Wild Programme is run in partnership with the London Wildlife Trust, London Youth and the John Muir Trust. The aim of the project is to open up opportunities for underrepresented groups of young people to explore the many wildlife spaces that London holds.

Martina was a Keeping It Wild trainee and we worked with her over a 12-week period doing media training sessions for the Level 2 OCN, between July – September 2020. After finishing her A-Levels, Martine joined the Keeping It Wild traineeship as she was looking for experiences in conservation. By the end of the 12-weeks, Martina had decided to pursue her new-grown passion in film and journalism and has since gone on to join BFI alumni! 

During our sessions Martina was really engaged in the projects that we ran, and we were able to see her passions and interests in media grow greatly during our time with her. She shared many interesting perspectives and stories during our sessions and showed a great strength in writing and expressing her ideas. “Making our own short videos taught me that people will not see your creation the same way you do, or how you expect them to. (It gave me a new) appreciation for how much work goes into a production and all the roles involved”

As part of his media and journalism training, Martina created a short video based on issues facing young Londoners in nature and the environmental sector. Martina focused her project on how the digital media affects young people’s mental health, and how time outdoors can help with this. She drew on ideas through research and shared experiences of young people to create a fictional video to highlight the issue. Martina’s video was filmed and edited using only a phone, which she said that she really enjoyed and created a really powerful video! 

Martina shared some of her personal outcomes and learnings from her media training- “self-growth, because it gave many opportunities for self-expression. I didn't realise how much I would enjoy all of it - especially videography. Even if you're unsure, go for it, don't be so doubtful”

At the end of the session, Martina shared that she had “quite a dramatically bigger interest in journalism”. She had decided that she was going to pursue this interest in film, media and journalism, with a particular focus on film journalism. Her plan after finishing was to “get back into the regular flow of photography course, get experience in writing/film journalism and begin building a portfolio/open a blog, open a social media on a topic of my choice (IG), continue exploring video-making, narrow down what I want to work on professionally”

Since finishing the Keeping It Wild Traineeship, Martina has joined the Headliners Young Reporters Bureau and completed further training in filmmaking with the BFI.

To see some of the media content that Bobbi and her fellow trainees created click here

The traineeship is one strand of the Keeping It Wild Project. This project is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and this particular activity strand was supported by Tallow Chandlers.