British Council launches media training for Women in Pakistan
Pakistan Times National News Desk

LAHORE: The British Council in collaboration with Scriptnet, UK, organised a ceremony to launch the X-Changes: Media Training workshop for Women in Pakistan here on Monday.

The X-Changes project consists of three workshops to be held between October and December 2006 that aimed at providing professional standard training to women from across the country in areas of screen and script writing.

Moneeza Hashmi, X-Changes Project Coordinator for Pakistan, welcomed the guests and spoke about the key aims and objectives of the project, and Ms Judy Holland, workshop trainer, and Mr. Ian Masters, Chief Executive Officer of Scriptnet also spoke at the event attended by over 70 people from the fields of media, art and academia.

Moneeza said that project aims to capitalise in the recent growth in the media and television industries in Pakistan, and provide formal training to women aspiring to develop their skills in the area of script writing.

The training format takes the participants through the different stages of script development starting with the conceptual idea, moving on to the treatment and then to the final draft stage of a short screen drama, she added.

At the culmination of the three workshops, a judging panel will select five short drama scripts, produced by the participants of the workshops for eventual production and distribution in Pakistan, the UK and internationally.

Currently, the first workshop is under way with 30 women participants most of them associated with media organisations. The five-day workshop is being led by Ms Judy Holland, an experienced trainer from the UK who has a background as an editor, originally of books, more recently of film, television and radio scripts.

X-Changes is funded by Commonwealth Media Development Fund and supported by British Council. Scriptnet was founded in 1999 and it is a UK registered charity, which facilitates skill-sharing and cultural exchange through the media. Scriptnet works in a number of countries in the Commonwealth.●