Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF runs a Summer School programme for students/participants that occurs separate from the curriculum and the degree. It takes place during the European summer months. The programme consists of various short courses/workshops that are available to everyone across the globe. The Summer School is not an exchange programme among different universities but it is structured around an open call to any interested party. Participants of the courses/workshops receive a certificate of completion after each course. During our debriefing session after the Towards a future past workshop, the head of the Summer School programme, Julie Halten, asked me whether it would be possible to create and host a similar five-day workshop under the umbrella of the Summer School. This was a wonderful opportunity because I would work with participants who did not know each other, and I would have to find different ways to create cohesion, unity and balance within the group.

I designed a workshop that focused on exploring the present through memories that are attached to different sites in Berlin. The call was directed at professionals and students in the fields of filmmaking, literature and creative writing, anthropology, ethnology, memory studies, cultural studies and theatre studies, as well as any other interested person who wanted to explore themes associated with identity and memory in a practical workshop setting. The only requirement was to have access to a smartphone and bring it to the workshop. I have included this workshop because it is a good example of how one can use film as part of research for students who are from different disciplines and do not necessarily have any filmmaking experience.

The final group for my workshop consisted of participants from Germany, The Netherlands, Singapore and Cyprus. The participants were a broad mix of curators, visual artists, theatre practitioners, academics, an engineer, a medical doctor and one film director. Except for the film director, for the first time I was working with a group of participants who had no practical knowledge of filmmaking. I therefore had to create a context that unified the group while also acknowledging the diversity and using it to everyone's best advantage. What made this workshop challenging and exciting was that in this scenario the participants were simultaneously learning the craft while conducting the research.