I arrived at school last Monday morning tired but prepared. I had stayed up late the night before planning my assembly for the week. My topic was curiosity. It’s one of our 7Cs - part of our character curriculum. It’s crucial to our core vision as a school with a specialism in the creative arts.

Curiosity is the space between boredom and a new idea. It is the energy that pushes that new idea along until it becomes a well researched and carefully considered creative action. Curiosity is the engine room of imagination and innovation.

I was ready for my assembly.

The Louma 2 camera crane being demonstrated in our Project Space.

As I walked into the reception area of our school, I encountered an enormous remote controlled 75 foot telescopic camera crane - the Louma 2. This incredible piece of engineering was on loan to the school for the day so that our grip trainees could play with it. This piece of state-of-the-art kit has a swivelling head for a camera mount which is controlled remotely from the ground. It enables a film director to manoeuvre a camera up, down, forward, back, left and right at any angle in smooth motion. The Louma 2 has been used in countless productions by the best filmmakers in the world including Martin Scorsese (Hugo and Wolf of Wall Street), Keneth Branagh (Murder on the Orient Express) and Jon Favreau (Iron Man). Most recently it had been used to film the pageantry and procession of the royal funeral.

While I was marvelling at this remarkable piece of machinery, I noticed a small table to the side of the crane with an Oscar on it. Yes, an Oscar. Initially I assumed that it was a model but, on closer inspection, I realised that it was, in fact, the genuine article. It was a bonafide Oscar in recognition of technical achievements in film. I was then introduced to the Oscar winner who explained that his family business had invented this crane. It had taken them 30 years to get to the Louma 2. I went ‘full geek mode’ as I listened intently to the story, which started with the challenge to control heavy cameras remotely from a distance, then through the refining and improving process until the technology was perfected in the oscar winning invention in front of me. The whole process of innovation took half a lifetime and more passion, commitment and creativity than I would have appreciated without seeing it for myself. I was particularly struck by the process being described as ‘think different, see different, make different’.

It all clicked into place. Suddenly I realised that this Oscar was entirely an award for curiosity. This truly brilliant innovation had started with curiosity - a question… How can we make the camera rise up and then move it around? How could we keep the motion fluid and steady? How can we control it remotely? What hydraulics would we need? Could we make it telescopic? How can it be lighter, faster, quieter? This piece of technology (possibly like all great technology) started with a bunch of questions and experiments and models and more questions and prototypes and eventually, with a lot of collaboration and perseverance, it ended up as an innovation that changed filmmaking forever… and won an oscar.

I do love this school. I had planned a presentation on ‘Curiosity’ and then, entirely unbeknownst to me, I walked into reception and found an Oscar for that very thing waiting for me. As you might imagine, I quickly rewrote my assembly. I entitled it ‘Curiosity: Think different, see different, make different’. Students got to see the crane, meet the creative and technical team, hold the oscar and (most importantly) imagine themselves as innovators and inventors.

Go, be bored, then think something random, then wonder, imagine, research and then make and develop, reflect and refine and perfect… curiosity is the fuel of innovation and ingenuity.

I now await the pioneering innovations yet to come in the lifetime of our curious and creative students. Bring your Baftas and Oscars when you come and visit.