global digital creativity research & workshops

I was very lucky to be invited by the Cleveratom team to work with them as part of my ‘Work Experience’ within my Year 10 school curriculm - and what a week to be working with them on!

From the 5th through to the 12th July, Hal and Matt have both been working incredibly hard with students of various ages at the Bromfords School - Wickford, Essex on Creative Radio Production. This was in preparation of leading a cross-media production based entirely on the rather topical entertainment superstar ‘Michael Jackson’ as a tribute to his life and work. The workshops the students took part in during the week, led up to a final showcase which was performed to various Year 6 induction groups from accompanying local primary schools.

The final production consisted of a wide variety of highly-talented performances incorporating modern and contemporary dance and vocal engagement which was led in a ‘radio-style’ format by student DJs with a helping hand from Matt and Hal. Below are a few photos and YouTube videos displaying just some of the songs from the fantastically performed, exciting production.

To access ALL performances and visit our YouTube channel: please click here

Hal MacLean and myself joined the BBC Blast Truck in White City to in the lead facilitation role working with young people from the London Region on Digital Creativity projects. Hal and I spent two days of the event working with a group of budding young enthusiasts interested in a career in television. We demonstrated to them the technologies before undertaking a tough filming task. On the first day of White City we were joined by Ultralab’s Colin Elsey and co-Blast Lead Facilitator Hamish Scott-Brown who brought the young people from the Anglia Ruskin Summer School for a day on the truck undertaking an Animation task.

King Harold School’s Malcolm Burnett arranged for a bus load of his young people, spending their time between the truck events and the BBC’s 21CC Creativity Centre.

A huge amount of BBC staff were about for the three day event, in particular a strong presence of BBC mentors…. that’s people that work for the BBC helping the young people with advice.

The final day was completed with a big celebration of music, film and dance attended by well over 100 people. A great time was had by all.

Richard Millwood, Director of Ultralab joined the finale event and filmed the performances from one of the live cameras. Iona Walters, friend of Ultralab from ‘Input CBBC’ project days was also in attendance filming the dance participants in action. It was also great to see Gail Taylor, who was part of the Ultralab ‘Online Soap’ project back in 2002 (read more about it on this site), Gail now works for the BBC on mobile telephone projects and will be joining the Blast Truck when it arrives in Bristol, as a mentor.

Click to view some of the pictures taken at the event.

The BBC Blast Truck rolled in to Belfast. Hamish Scott-Brown stayed with the truck while it was in transit from its last tour location; Derry to its new home in Belfast. I flew home and flew back to join the truck and run Clay Animation classes.

While in Northern Ireland we’re lucky enough to be working with some of the BBC’s finest, including Michael who works on BBC Northern Ireland’s Newsline programme, editing together some of the news stories. Northern Ireland so far has been fantastic, both Hamish and I are shattered, but there is a real buzz here of activity and creative output…..we’ve really enjoyed ourselves…..and learnt a lot from the people we are working with.As ever, the quality of the content produced by the young people we are facilitating is simply excellent.Click to view a selection of pictures taken in Belfast.

It was also good to have Ultralab’s local Anthony Russell join us onboard to meet the team from BBC Northern Ireland.

One of the best bits aspects I think this truck offers is the ability to leave with any creative work made by young people. Each young person will leave the truck with a CD or a DVD containing their work, and using Apple technology they are also bluetoothing footage straight out of Apple’s iMovie right to their Bluetooth mobile phones.

We’ve been running film and animation workshops while VJ’s and DJ’s mix music and video in the adjoining room. Outside a cheerleading workshop has been teaching young boys and girls how to dance to music.

I have been working on the BBC Blast Truck at its first location ever at Liverpool’s Mann Island. Ultralab are working on board the BBC Blast Truck to provide a facilitation roll, while running creativity workshops for young people.

These past few days on the BBC truck have been amazing. I’m really proud to have been a part of the very first location for BBC Blast on Tour, this project is so important to those it reaches.

I’ve worked with some of the finest users of technology for creative purpose in the UK. In a nutshell, anyone who’s anyone in Digital Creativity local to the truck stops… is being asked to run workshops with local young people….in DJing, VJing, Filming, Dance, Animation, Hip Hop, MCing, Poetry, Creative Writing and loads loads more…. We’ve even had the head make-up artist at Mersey TV’s Hollyoaks programme making up the faces of our young people.

I’ve seen young people writing and singing songs from scratch in just two hours, to a live audience……oh and by the way, they could not hum a note prior to the workshop….

I watched in awe as our Shirley Pickford and Levi Tafari ran an urban poet class in Liverpool …. as young people, who started out shy stood up and read out their creative writing poems with passion and pride to an audience….

I saw tears in a mum’s eye as she proudly watched her daughter excitedly demonstrate her animation to her…

One young lad even ran into town to get some scissors to cut up some card to improve his animation…

Liverpool, an awesome place with an awesome team.

View the photographs taken by me.