In May 2026, Sketch Films travelled to Lusaka for a four-day shoot at Crucible Lusaka: the first Crucible school, which opened in Zambia in February 2025. The film documents an institution with serious ambitions: by 2045, Crucible aims to establish 100 academies across Africa, with Lusaka serving as the proof of concept.

The school welcomed 28 students selected from over 400 of Zambia's most talented teenagers. A fully residential college, it offers STEM education alongside a bespoke liberal arts and leadership curriculum, with students sitting Cambridge International AS and A Level exams to support entry into top universities worldwide. All places are fully scholarships, covering school fees and accommodation.

The shoot followed this founding cohort: students whose stories provide the film's narrative thread. Their voices carry the documentary alongside portraits of the staff and leadership building the school from the ground up. Sketch Films worked observationally throughout, favouring real environments and unscripted moments: classrooms, communal spaces, and the Longacres neighbourhood campus.

Crucible's philosophy places the communities its students come from at the heart of the school, while nurturing a global outlook: rooted in the African principle of Ubuntu, the recognition of shared humanity and collective purpose. The film aims is to make that philosophy visible; not through abstraction, but through the specific, lived experience of the people inside the school.

The completed film will be delivered for use across advocacy, fundraising, and communications platforms.

Client: Project Everyone

Project Everyone is a not-for-profit communications agency and UN Global Partner for SDG Advocacy and Outreach, founded by screenwriter and director Richard Curtis. Their mission is to accelerate progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (the Global Goals) by 2030, using the power of communications to drive global awareness and action. They sit at the centre of a network spanning civil society, governments, brands, and UN agencies, with partners including UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, and the UN itself.