global digital creativity research & workshops

Hal MacLean, Shirley Pickford and myself headed to Manchester’s G-Mex arena for the first ever ‘Exciting Minds’ conference and arena by Creative Partnerships.

Shirley and myself represented the ‘Digital Teacher Network‘ which is a free online portal for teachers to manage projects online. 51 other exhibitors shared the arena with us, all based out of inflatable pods, it was really quite remarkable. To our right were Channel Four Learning, over the walkway opposite were the British Council.

Shirley and myself manned the pod all day talking to the other exhibitors, visitors and delegates of the show, which is really quite important. It still amazes me how creativity is not a core part of the British Education system curriculum, it was refreshing to read the words of Tessa Jowell after her keynote speech (See here).

Professor Stephen Heppell, founder of Ultralab and Director of Heppell.net also spoke on the future of creativity in education. In the sessions Hal MacLean from our team spoke to an audience on the future of school design, reflecting on his extensive experience in the field, relating the national and international case studies on what is good and indeed needs work where learning space design is concerned. On his return to the arena Hal spent the afternoon at the Digital Teacher Network pod speaking with the delegates that followed him back from his talk.

It was great to once again spend the day working with Shirley who delighted the audiences with examples of creativity use within education, reflecting on her experiences which date back to the Tesco School Net 2000 project, Shirley was the Millennium Dome based representative for that creativity central project.

It was also nice to see so many friends turning up and exploring the arena.

View the pictures of the event taken by the Creative Partnerships team.

Hal MacLean and myself spent this evening with the young people and their families from the Bromley Learning Alliance 2006 Summer School, in Bromley. We headed down to celebrate the animation work created by the young people over the summer months.

The challenge which was set back in July this year was to create a modern day comic book, in animation, photography, sound and film.  The ‘tough task’ was called ‘Twist of Fate’ and had ‘no right answer’, as ever.  The young people are giving an induction session to the technology and project, they then return to their collective schools over the summer to undertake the challenge.
We have been working with Merril Haeusler (Director) of the BLA since her days with SEEVEAZ (South East of England Virtual Education Action Zone). It was refreshing to see Merril at the event, and hearing her relate back to the early days back in 2000 when she first launched the project with us. If it had not been for the investment by Merril both financially, and more importantly her belief in what young people can do with creative technoloies I really do question where we would be today. As my last official presentation event for Ultralab it was nice to be in the company with Merrill, who was at my first ever Ultralab engagement back in 2000, at the Millennium Dome in London (Read about it here).

We’ve come a long way since that early project, travelled the world, impacted on broadcasters, governments, education establishments and policy makers. We still have a lot of work to do, together.

So here they are, the creative comics created under the banner of ‘Twist of Fate’ by the tallented young people of the Bromley area, enjoy:

 Changing Dreams: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Space Pigs: Play Now | Play in Popup
 The Restless Race: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Twist of Fate: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Unlucky Lottery Ticket: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Wacky William: Play Now | Play in Popup
 World Cup 2006: Play Now | Play in Popup

The 14th, 15th and 16th of November now stand out as some of the best days in my career so far. We’ve worked long and hard to persue governments, broadcasters and education institutions to promote the fact that children are very creative when united with the power of enabling technologies.

BBC Wales initiated a pilot project to find out what idents could look like if Children created idents themselves, using stop frame clay animation.

I spent last Wednesday (8 November) at BBC Broadcasting House in Cardiff working with various team members from 2W to work out how the technology being used could be enabled for 16:9 (widescreen) viewing. To the right is how the ident will be placed on the work created by the children. We have decided to use Apple Computers running iStopMotion animation software and Sony XM1 camera technology. All of the work will be created in widescreen, our experiment worked. It has been decided that the background the children will animate in front of will be yellow, music will also be added in post production.So how would a six year old make an ident anyway?

Geraint Lang from the team and myself spent three enjoyable days at Caerleon Infant School near Newport, Wales, with Susan Wood and her team from BBC Wales. The demountable classroom had been tranformed for the event which would see young people creating the idents for BBC 2W (the Welsh version of BBC 2 in Wales).

Geraint and I spent the Tuesday afternoon with the group of thirty young people talking to them about animation and what the challenge was that they had been set.

On Wednesday and Thursday we took the now split group of children (15 per day) forward providing them with the clay, technology (computers and cameras) and backdrop to generate their animations.

Over the three day period the young people were challenged to make a 12 second animation in clay on a yellow background, the title they were challenged to make was ‘What Christmas means to me’. Snowmen, Father Christmas, Sledges, Presents and even Santa in the Bath were all created and constructed.

The music for the animations, which is rumoured to be ‘Jingle Bells’ will be recorded at a nearby Secondary School. The animations will hopefully be a part of the Christmas schedule for BBC 2W, the background of programme announcements.
As previously posted Hal MacLean and myself had conducted the research for this project at the Cressing Primary School, near Braintree, Essex.

Here are three of the completed 37 animations, minus the 2W logo which is soon to be added:

 Father Christmas Eating his Dinner: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Snowman Football: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Snowman Walking: Play Now | Play in Popup