Film & Production
ECAF
Seven Emirates. Six months. A national programme, documented as it happened.
Client
Culture Emulsion
Year
2025
Discipline
Film & Production
What we did
Film Production · Photography · Multi-Location Production
Results
The brief
ECAF, the Emirati Culture Activity Framework for Schools, is a UAE cultural and educational initiative led by Culture Emulsion in collaboration with the UAE Ministry of Culture. It ran in four phases across all seven Emirates, bringing Emirati culture into schools and learning spaces through hands-on sessions. The programme needed a record that could keep up with it: one visual story, told consistently from one Emirate to the next.
Strategy
Follow the programme wherever it goes, and capture the learning without interrupting it.
Action
A film for each phase, social videos, a highlight film, a prize-ceremony film and a photo library, across seven Emirates.
01
One programme. Seven Emirates.
ECAF doesn't live in one venue. Our team travelled with it for around six months, covering its activity in every Emirate. Each location brought a different room, different light and a different group of participants, but the coverage had to read as one programme. A consistent crew and a consistent way of shooting kept every stop part of the same story.
A group activity during an ECAF session
The film
02
Workshops, captured as they happen.
The value of the programme is in the room: the questions, the group activities, the moment someone's hand goes up. We filmed and photographed those moments as they unfolded, working around the facilitators rather than directing them, so participants stayed focused on the session and not on the camera.
Students during an ECAF workshop
03
Culture, in the participants’ own hands.
Close details told the story as much as the wide shots: Arabic written by hand, books on Emirati heritage on the shelves, and students taking part side by side.
04
Four phases. A film for every one.
ECAF ran in four phases, and each one had its own deliverables. Every phase got a dedicated film and a stream of short videos for social media. On top of that came a highlight film of the whole programme, a film of the prize ceremony and a photography library covering it all. Together they give ECAF a full visual record of what the programme looks like in practice.
At an ECAF event, with the programme banner behind
Culture is learnt in the room. Our role was to carry the room further.
GOMBOC’s contribution
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