global digital creativity research & workshops

The results from the 2001 project are amazing, with 17 excellent movies. The movies were turned into a DVD and exhibited at the V&A (Victorla and Albert) museum in an evening celebration of digital creativity managed by the Ultralab team. Click to watch the audience arrive.

The film ‘Tacky’ stretched the possibilities of iMovie 2, ‘Tragedy’ was partly filmed at 4am, and the girls from ‘Ordinary’. Ordinary is a movie containing lots of face painted children defended their movie exceptionally well infront of a live audience at the V&A…

Teacher in Audience: “Why have you got your face painted throughout the movie? face painting is not ordinary”.

Girl from ‘Ordinary’ Film: “To a face painter, face painting is ordinary”.

December’s event at the V&A was attended by the DfES and the press, a spectacular achievement for all involved. The very first DVD to be produced by Ultralab was built and presented to every child who took part in the project.

The movies have since been showcased at conferences and presentations worldwide. At one conference the BBC saw the work and began discussions with Ultralab on a potential project where Children make their own television.

Click to watch Tacky or Tragedy or to watch the V&A event highlights for 2001, or click here to watch all the other movies from 2001.

Greg Childs from the Future TV department at Children’s BBC was the special guest speaker.

Ultralab Team:
Stephen Heppell, George Variopoulos, Matthew Eaves, Hamish Scott-Brown, Mark Constable, Neil Boughen, Richard Millwood, Claire Gregory, Colin Elsey and Alex Blanc

SEEVEAZ (South East of England Virtual Education Action Zone) approached Ultralab to ‘do something creative’ with children during the month of August 2000. The ‘action zones’ were set up as part of a government initiative to support schools within regions who had not fully adopted technology within their teaching and learning. SEEVEAZ became the only ‘virtual’ action zone in the country and worked closely with Ultralab throughout its five year life-span (starting in 2000).

SEEVEAZ initially challenged Ultralab with young people from its regional schools which were considered ‘gifted and talented’ but were also ‘not performing to their potential.

The objective of the first summer school was to give a ‘touch challenge’ which would try and test the young people involved in the project to ‘raise their game’ when returning to academic lessons after the summer break.

Ultralab Director, Stephen Heppell challenged the young people with a project called ‘Transformation’. The young people were given still cameras and computers and set the task (in groups) to ‘tell the story of transformation from one state to another in a series of still images’.

The completed pieces of work were exhibited at the Millenium Dome, where Ultralab worked with Tesco to design ‘The Learning Zone’.

One of the seven movies, ‘A Century of People’ is based on the ageing process in humans. The movie starts with a pregnant woman, then a newborn baby, then a one year old right through to a one hundred year old person. The movie points out the differences between the ages that you would not normally notice. There are a hundred photographs, one for every age.

The movies produced by the children from the SEEVEAZ schools in Essex and Kent were so exceptional and led to the 2001 project ‘Emotions’, which budget was allocated to for the purchase of equipment schoolwide.

Lots of lessons were learnt from the initial pilot project which went on to being and formulate the Ultralab formula to running an effective digital creativity project on a global scale.

Some of the movies are here on digitalcreativity.org, click below to watch them:

 Century of People : This project is based on the ageing process in humans. It starts with a pregnant woman going on to a newborn baby then on to a one year old up to a hundred year old. It points out the differences between the ages that you would not normally notice.: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Tempus Fugit : Our transformation takes you through the life of a person in a series of still photographs with text, from birth to death. As time goes by (shown by the scene in the background changes) we show that a person would transform, by using different actors walking across the foreground. We used similar clothes, however throughout the entire piece to show that some things always stay the same.: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Time to Die : The project is based upon Weapons of warfare and shows a good mix of weapons and battle scenes. It starts from the simple flint dagger to the powerful mechanical weaponary of the modern day.: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Papernautics : Papernautics is about a piece of paper transforming into different objects and going on a journey.: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Time and Tide : A series of digital images which portray the transformation of a sand castle decaying with time.: Play Now | Play in Popup