global digital creativity research & workshops

Today Neil Boughen and myself headed up the M11 to Cambridge to support the local Anglia Ruskin Summer School 2006 at Cambridge Campus. The one week ‘Introduction to University’ programme demonstrates to participants what University life can be like, and is aimed at those who’s parents have not been to University. Neil and I were there for two hours, introducing the young people to the work of Ultralab globally followed by an hour session called ‘An Introduction to Animation’. Due to the time limitations we decided to set the young people our quickest challenge, which is the start with a clay ball and return it to its original state by the end of their work. Each young person received an email copy of their work, those with Bluetooth telephones left with their work on their phone. DVD’s were also made for all the participants.

Ultralab also ran the entire Essex based Summer School on behalf of the Anglia Ruskin University, a week long event, you’ll find information on that project here on the website. Ultralab has been running Anglia Ruskin’s Summer School’s for the past five years, this was the last time we will be working with John Butcher, Director of Summer Schools. John leaves the University at the end of the month to pursue new avenues, we wish him the very best luck for the future.

Here is the work created within the one hour period from the five participating groups within the one hour period:

For the past four years (excluding last year) Ultralab has been running the Anglia Ruskin University Summer School. Young people from around the Essex region will be attending Ultralab for an entire week working on their film, music and animation skills. On Wednesday the young people will head to the BBC Blast Truck in White City to join myself and Hal MacLean for their Animation session. Hamish Scott-Brown, Neil Boughen and Colin Elsey will be working with the young people for the rest of the time they are with us.

Lecturers and other visitors from around the University will arrive at Ultralab to give talks to the young people who’s parents never actually attended university themselves.

Over the next five days the young people will be invited to participate in much ‘tougher’ creative challenges.

In the first hour from arriving Hamish set the young people the challenge to make a ‘12 photograph story’ as a team building and ice breaking exercise, here is the completed work from that one hour session:

Ultralab has a long working history with the pupils and staff at King Harold School of Waltham Abbey, Essex. For the past four years pupils of King Harold School have been involved in Ultralab’s Summer School programme. However, this summer the pupils will instead run a Summer School of their own Summer School for pupils of the Primary Partners Schools who feed King Harold each year with new students. King Harold’s pupils will run the entire event themselves.

A team of students from King Harold arrived at Ultralab to spend the afternoon with Ultralab’s Hal MacLean to plan and discuss the activities which would be running on the Primary Summer School. Hal is a former Primary Head Teacher and assisted the young people with experience working with the younger age groups. Malcolm Burnett from King Harold School is overseeing the project, pictures and completed animation work will be posted on this site soon.

Ultralab have been commissioned by BBC Blast after a long working relationship over the years to provide the lead facilitation role on the first ever BBC Blast National Tour. Ultralab has years of experience facilitating groups of young people (on a global scale) working to use technology for creative purpose. The Ultralab team will be working with ‘Event Producers’ nationally to support the planning and rollout of creativity workshops across the entire 15 week tour. Hal, Hamish and Matthew will rotate during the tour itself, but will overlap in Northern Ireland and London.

Hal MacLean reflects on the training day, attended by Hamish Scott-Brown, Matthew Eaves and Hal himself:

You can’t really imagine what a juggernaut looks like as a training area, and the following images probably don’t really help except to show the amazing flexibility of the vehicle itself. These were taken at the BBCs outside broadcast depot in Acton.

Whilst this looks like a cafe area, you are seeing one side of the truck and the outside area that will be covered with a canopy. To the left is a low stage and between the windows are some floodlights that will give a great ambience to the space. The outside area is intended to be for sample workshops, dance work, performance and so on. It can hold about 100 people for a show.

The sides of the truck concertina up to form a roof, and extend the width of the space. The walls fold out and the floor unfolds sideways as well. A normal truck is about 7ft wide, but this image shows the extended width, which I estimate as nearer 25 feet.

On the inside the space has four tables which are fitted with 3 laptops each. Plasma screens around the edge (one per table) and an interactive whiteboard are available… along with loads of other techie stuff. The dividers around the tables are removable for more collaborative working.

With space for 12 laptops we reckon we could get 24 - 30 people working in there easily enough, but the limit is for 50 people inside when it is set up for a showcase. Towards the far right end of the shot is a doorway that leads into a studio space and more visible on the left you go into an editing suite - this will have 3 macbook pro machines in it as well as video mixing, hard discs, network equipment and shedloads of other stuff to allow people to bring along just about any format media and have it digitized so that they can work on it.

Here you can see video mixers, audio mixers and on the far right are a couple of tape ‘ingest’ drives - further over to the right, out of shot, are the network routers and hard drives, DVD burners, VTR machines… a veritable playground!

This suite looks in to a studio space which is going to be multifunctional - currently a backdrop screen and a chair are all that is in there, but look at the number of people - it can easily hold half a dozen plus camera crew…

The event producers were all there and anxious to know what they would be able to do in the space - true to form, Hamish and Matt introduced them to the joys of digital creativity through an intensive two hour workshop packed with stills photography, storyboarding, animation, garage band, iMovie… endless ideas and ways to actively engage the young people who will visit.

Hame, Matt and I will be working a frantic carousel of attendance at the different locations… supported by Richard and Colin (who hopefully will cover the Reading Festival as a location for the truck). Other locations are still being organised and it’s all hands to the pumps! Liverpool starts the tour *tomorrow*!!

Good luck to the Liverpool team, and to Matt who will be the lead facilitator on the day.

On the 26th of January 2006 eight creative learners from King Harold School worked in Ultralab at Anglia Ruskin University with researchers Hal MacLean and Matthew Eaves to further their skills with Final Cut Pro, a computer application to create and edit visual material.

The young people at King Harold School work closely with the Ultralab on projects using technology for creative purpose, recently supporting Ultralab at the BETT education show in London this January providing the young people to work on the stand and demonstrate new technologies and how they could be applied in classroom teaching.

The objective of the training day was to begin the process of learning how to manipulate the footage to create visually appealing programmes suitable for television. King Harold School is an innovative school which is always looking for new ways to broaden learning opportunities for it students to enable, include and encourage work on real world projects and innovations prior to employment.

Ultralab works with many schools nationwide, promoting how technology can be used to creative purpose in the classroom, Ultralab is working closely with the school to develop new ways of working together in a pilot which will see young people move involved in project based learning while exploring the potential of a future at University.

Click here to view the pictures from the day.

Kingsway’ the Christian youth group in Billericay brought a group of young people they are working with at the Billericay School to Ultralab today. The group are working on various creative arts projects over an eight week period and join Ultralab to focus on clay animation in a two hour session.

Ultralab has expertise in film, sound and animation and was last year followed by our friends at BBC Blast while we explored our first ever Animation Summer School.

I have spent the past two days working in Christchurch New Zealand with colleagues from our Sister Ultralab to roll out the labs Summer School model as part of potential pilot with TVNZ’s TV2 channel.

The project was to find out what children’s television made by children could be like, using some of the research findings from previous Summer School’s and the Input CBBC pilot from 2002/3. The pilot was also to show Ultralab South how the Summer School model works ready for the big Summer School event right across New Zealand in January 2004.

Some excellent movies were created by the pilot, all ‘Points of View Squared’ and will be included on the 2003 DVD production.

Click to see the pictures taken over the two day period: Day 1, Day 2.

For the first time ever the Ultralab Digital Creativity Summer School programme went international. The project went to Northern Ireland, working as part of the peace process with Catholic and Protestant children to see what could be created using the Summer School model over a three day period within a community environment. The results were excellent. The group were the very first to undertake the ‘Points of View 2 (Squared) challenge. The project lasted three days.

Five excellent movies were created in just three days. The majority of the Summer School Researchers in Belfast had never used video equipment and Apple computers before. The movies are fantastic, the films being about bullying, being a young child, the view of a motorcyclist, a mouse and a blade of grass.

“As youth leaders from across the community divide we knew each other but we had never worked together. Ultralab’s summer school gave us that opportunity.” Stuart (Youth Leader)

“The kids were together, focused on making films rather on what divides them” Kelly (Youth Leader).

View some of the pictures taken during the event.

Watch the completed movies here: