For school-aged children, the past few years have been like no other: with education, learning, friendships and everyday lives impacted by the global pandemic. We launched the 2021 Schools Time Capsule to help children and young people across the UK to recollect and reflect on life during the pandemic.

In partnership with BAFTA Kids and Oak National Academy, the 2021 Schools Time Capsule was an opportunity for school communities to come together to reflect on and capture their experiences.

Building on our 2021 Children’s Mental Health Week theme ‘Express Yourself’, we encouraged children and young people to share their reflections through art, photography, writing or media.

The 2021 Schools Time Capsule aimed to help children reflect on their experiences and encourage a sense of togetherness within their school community, by creating something to mark the end of an extraordinary year. We hoped that taking part in the project will help children to identify, share and normalise their feelings.

Now the capsule has been preserved, you can watch the showreel to hear directly from the children and young people who took part by sharing their thoughts and feelings of life during the pandemic.

How to take part

Schools across the UK were invited to take part in this project, which ran from Monday 7 June to Friday 17 September. Our free resource pack includes activity ideas and top tips to help schools take part in the project.

Each school that took part was invited to submit a selection of pupils’ work to be included in our time capsule, which will be preserved at BAFTA 195 Piccadilly, BAFTA’s prestigious headquarters in London. A selection of entries will be shared in a showcase film, to be released during the autumn term. In 25 years’ time, to mark 100 years of BAFTA and over 50 years of Place2Be, the capsule will be opened so we can reflect on, and remember, this moment in time.

Submissions to the time capsule are now closed, but schools are still welcome to take part in the activities within the project.

Download free resource pack (1016 KB)

Download Welsh resource pack (1174 KB)

Looking for more inspiration?

We asked experts across art and photography, writing and media to share their top tips for pupils taking part in the project.