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All Teaching Packs (zip file, 92.1 mb)

Teaching Pack A: Mary Field, film pioneer (zip file, 24.8 mb)

This set of activities explores the changes in gender roles and experiences through the story of one woman. Mary Field became the director of the Secrets of Nature series in 1929. Although the relationship between gender roles and work had shifted somewhat as a result of the First World War, women’s access to the professions remained severely limited. For some women, the relatively novel film industry offered one pathway to success. The activities in this teaching pack contextualise Field’s career in relation to changes in women’s rights, their position in the workplace, and the specific conditions of women’s work in the film industry. 

Teaching Pack B: Secrets of Nature and the London Zoo (zip file, 29.4 mb)

This set of activities introduces students to the history of zoos and the animals held inside them. This is done through the example of London Zoo, where many of the Secrets of Nature films were shot. In the twentieth century, the popularity of zoos as a site of leisure and entertainment exploded. Animals – often collected at great expense from far-flung locations – became objects of entertainment, both for visitors to the zoo itself, and for viewers around the country who watched light entertainment films shot on its premises. The activities invite pupils to reflect on changing attitudes towards animals across time, including timely issues relating to species extinction.

Teaching Pack C: Secrets of Nature and the countryside (zip file, 24.5 mb)

This set of activities is designed to get pupils thinking about changes in the British environment over the past hundred years. It explores the anxieties of people in the 1920s and 1930s who believed that the countryside was at risk, and the origins of “conservation” as a movement. Using one film as an example, The Nightingale (1930) it also encourages pupils to consider declining biodiversity in the UK. 

Teaching Pack D: Going to the cinema in the 1920s and 1930s (zip file, 12.4 mb)

This set of ten activities introduces students to the history of cinema going in Britain: what was it like to go to the cinema nearly one hundred years ago? Pupils will engage with a range of primary sources including first-hand accounts of the cinema, adverts from local newspapers and statistics from the period to piece together how people viewed films in the past. The activities are all centred around the Secrets of Nature series and the films that they were shown alongside. They also shed light on the global nature of cinema in the 1920s and 1930s, and include statistics based on an interactive map of Secrets of Nature screenings.