Our youth and community initiatives include:

• Film Workshops with Youth Clubs and other groups in Bo'ness
• New Found Sound - a unique schools initiative inviting young musicians to create and perform music to accompany silent film
• Community Tours of silent films to schools, hospitals, and care homes
• Hippsters - our young reviewer programme for 18-25-year-olds
• Film-making Courses for young people in all aspects of filmmaking from camera and sound, to screenwriting and editing.

New Found Sound

New Found Sound is the Festival's flagship youth event which has been part of the HippFest programme since the beginning. Each year we work with different local schools and their work is performed at the Festival. 

For the 2023 Festival we invited talented young people to compose and perform music to accompany silent films from the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive, supported by Youth Music Initiative.

With the support of YMI tutor John Somerville, the Falkirk Schools Senior Trad Band accompanied Glasgow Gets to Work (1935) - a joyous ride around 1935 Glasgow's bustling road, rail and river transport network, while the Falkirk Junior Trad Band accompanied Summer in Scotland (1950) - a charming portrait of a day in high summer when a wee girl and her West Highland Terrier get up to mischief around the farm where she lives.

For our second half of the screening, young composers from Falkirk District Schools, Chloe, Megan, Anya and Erin presented a highly innovative accompaniment they composed with mentorship from Jane Gardner and Gregor Blamey to the early animation film ‘Camera Makes Whoopee’, complete with balloon popping percussive moments.

Listen to a short excerpt from the live Q&A from New Found Sound at HippFest 2023.

2022

For the 2022 Festival, three piano students from Falkirk schools premiered their new score for Early Birds (1956) - an adorable short made by award-winning amateur filmmaker Frank Marshall about a tiny tot’s raid on the family kitchen. This was followed by two remarkable shorts accompanied by the Falkirk Schools Traditional Bands Da Makkin o’ a Keshie (1932), directed by pioneering Scottish filmmaker Jenny Gilbertson, in which a Shetland crofter demonstrates how to make a 'keshie' to carry home his peat; and The Coming of the Camerons (1944), following Cairngorms postie Jean Cameron on her bicycle rounds and campaign to secure uniform trousers for post women instead of the regulation skirt.

Watch highlights from our 2022 New Found Sound event here:

2021/2020

In 2020 we worked with students from Grangemouth High School and the Falkirk Schools Traditional Bands. The students did not have the opportunity to play live however, we were delighted to premiere a recording of their work as part of HippFest 2021. 

Led by mentor Colin Broom (Composer, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and leading folk musicians John Somerville, Marc Duff (Capercaillie co-founder), and Laura Beth Salter (The Shee) - tutors with Falkirk Schools’ Traditional Music Groups,  students from Grangemouth High School conducted the Falkirk Schools Orchestra's new score for All On A Summer’s Day (1933). 

This was followed by two other short films from the National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive, Schoolboy Hostellers (1951, abridged), and Log Cabin (1936), accompanied by the Falkirk Schools Traditional Bands.

Click here to read our Programme Notes for 2021.