AFTRS CEO Nell Greenwood has used the second session of the Digital Futures Summit to introduce a five-year plan for the national screen and broadcast school.
Titled Creating the Future, the strategy outlines three key principles: national reach, excellence, and sustainability.
Within the scope of national reach, AFTRS aims to embed First Nations culture, knowledge, and values across the school to creating opportunities for under-represented talent, while providing flexible models of delivery that allow its learning and resources to be accessible, both online and face-to-face.
The five-year plan defines the second principle, excellence, as AFTRS “serving and enriching the creative community and generating the new knowledge the screen and broadcast industry needs to stay at the forefront of global innovation and best practice”. With this in mind, the school plans work with industry partners to provide future-looking learning experiences that offer career pathways.
In the strategy, AFTRS also identifies sustainability for staff, students, and the industry it serves as a requirement in being able to achieve the prior two goals.
With the institution celebrating its 50th anniversary next year, Greenwood there had been discussions about “what it means to be the national screen and broadcast school”.
“It always strikes me as such a beautiful and powerful idea that this school was created by national funds, by the people of Australia, for the pursuit of creative excellence,” she said.
“That bipartisan act of parliament back in 1973 means that Australians can turn on the television, or the radio, pick up an iPhone or go to the movies, and access world-leading Australian screen, audio and broadcast stories that do the important work great stories do: entertaining, transporting, challenging, connecting and, sometimes, transforming us – because good stories matter and they can change things.”
AFTRS chair Russel Howcroft said its purpose of delivering world-leading creative education across Australia had “never been clearer”.
“After the last couple of years, the need for these good stories and the skilled, reflective, daring creators from across Australia who make them, has never been more urgent,” he said.