global digital creativity research & workshops

During the half term holiday in London Matt and I worked for the BBC running the Networked Identity project at the Science Museum and the Serpentine Gallery. This event was for young people to spend time finding ways of expressing their emotions about the environment that they are in.

Working with us for the week was Christian Nold who has developed a scientific art form called ‘Biomapping’. In brief, this is a lie detector mechanism which you wear as you walk around an environment. The detector measures changes in your state of arousal, or your emotional response to your current situation. Combine this with a GPS device and you have the ability to plot your emotional response on a map of your area… Google maps come in very handy here!

Additionally, throughout the week we encouraged the participants to blog their experiences, photograph and video where they went and keep a project diary of all of it. The Science Museum hosted a number of events for the participants, including free entry into the Science of Spying exhibition - a wonderful interactive event whcih really captivated the young (and old) alike! Rob Skitmore from the Science Museum also ran a morning’s workshop getting the young people to make a telegraph - in one week we travelled from the early part of the last century into the here and now! Rob was excellent, and the activity a great success.
All of this data was important to keep as they were also working towards an Arts Council Bronze award. The Serpentine Gallery had an exhibition of Karen Kilimnic’s work. This formed the focus for the second part of the week. Sophie Higgs from the Serpentine Gallery worked with us for the last couple of days and really helped bring out some very interesting ideas from the group.

There were some problems throughout the week with the technology, which was a bit of a shame. Just about everything electronic which we plugged in at one time or another managed to fail at some level. This introduced an edginess and challenge to the week which we were not so accustomed to, and meant that I spent a lot of time on the telephone talking to Matt about ways around the issues! It wasn’t that each piece of kit died, so much as different pieces were not working together as well as they might have done!

Despite this, by the end of the week there had been an astonishing amount of creativity exhibited by the participants and a display of the work was mounted at the Serpentine Gallery on the Friday. Parents and friends were able to visit, view and share in the work that was done, much of which was at a very high level of achievement.

So, well done to all who took part, thanks to all who supported (including the tireless Katie Holbird from BBC Blast) and special mention to John and Mike from Reflecmedia who went out of their way to ensure we had kit in time for the event to use with the young people.

For one day only Hal MacLean and the BBC Blast Truck were in London’s Trafalgar Square demonstrating the BBC’s flagship creative project and encouraging young people to climb on board and have a go.

Above, Hal juggles.

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.

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.

Hal MacLean, myself and Director of Ultralab, Richard Millwood from the Ultralab team at Anglia Ruskin University spent the afternoon and evening with the BBC Blast team in White City’s Media Centre, London to share and celebrate with the wider BBC the progress made by Blast, the BBC’s creative platform giving kids a place to be creative.  Malcolm Burnett and two students from King Harold School supported the event by demonstrating creative Animation work to the BBC audience.

Ultralab’s SMS wall of stickies was available, developed by Alexander Blanc, the underpinning SMS system ‘UltraSMS’ developed by Tim Ellis.

Click here to view the pictures.

Today, (Saturday) Maureen Gurr and myself headed to London to the BBC Broadcasting House bringing together the young people from Saffron Walden County High School and King Harold School for the planning day for ‘Create at BETT 2006.

For the past five years Ultralab have been working in conjunction with Apple Computer and other partners to deliver the ‘Create at BETT’ feature at BETT, the educational technology show at Olympia in London (11 - 14 January 2006).

The BETT Show attracted 24,000 visitors last year, the ‘Create at BETT’ stand is one of the few stands which does not actually sell anything, it is purely there to demonstrate how creative young people can be with technology.

Considering that people under the age of 18 are not allowed into the show, it is great that ‘Create at BETT’ continues to be the only stand fully staffed by young people ‘being creative’, the idea is that visitors will leave the show with creative ideas to take back to their institutions to move creative use of technology forward.

BBC Blast! are involved in the project this year, our training day for the young people involved took place at the BBC’s 21CC (21st Century Classroom) facility at broadcasting house.

On the stand the young people will be demonstrating film, sound, podcasting and animation technologies, all surrounded by an EastEnders theme. BBC EastEnders will be the focus of new script ideas, model animations of classic scenes and the challenge to create a new theme tune sequence for the show.

Both involved schools, friends of Ultralab’s Digital Creativity projects will be sending sixteen children to the show between them. The young people will stay in London with Ultralab.

Maureen Gurr, Richard Millwood, Kris Popat and Matthew Eaves will be representing Ultralab for the duration of the event on the ‘Create at BETT stand’.

We’re used to working globally with people of all ages, religions and races. Here we are challenged to undertake a digital creativity project for a London suburbs school with a high intake of Korean young people, Jo Fletcher reports:

It is common knowledge that the schools in and around London are ever increasing their intake of children from foreign backgrounds. The assumption (if somewhat stereotypical) has always been that these students stick with their own kind and excel in subjects such as science, maths and music because they boast a somewhat ‘universal’ language. Schools see them as an opportunity to raise and improve exam results and to give their school a cultural diversity. But seemingly not much consideration goes on into the emotional effects on a child going into a foreign school in a foreign country. What goes through the mind of a child that has moved to Britain, sometimes on their own, who speaks little English, knows nothing of the culture and is expected to integrate into our education system?

Chessington Community College (based in Kingston, London) contacted Ultralab, knowing that they specialise in improving and developing education through technology. The college wanted to develop a project through which the school’s Korean community could express their feelings and experiences of coming to Britain and learning at Chessington Community College (CCC). Ultralab suggested a project through which the students could make a film and the students would be allowed to take control of what goes on in the film as well as the technical side of film making.

On 13 th of July, Matthew Eaves and Neil Boughen of Ultralab went to CCC to get the film making process underway. They bought with them the computers, camera’s and programme’s the students would need to create their film and set about teaching the kids how to use it. Matthew and Neil were adamant that the contents of the film and how it was created was the students responsibility as opposed to Neil and Matthew arriving at the school and making all these decisions for them. With a typical Korean education being book based, this gave the students the opportunity to work on a practical project devised by themselves while learning along the way.

The film would be for new Korean students starting at the school showing them how other members of the Korean community at the school felt when they first started, what they did to make friends and what their British friends thought when they started. It was structured around a series of interviews with their friends and some of their teachers. The video is structured through a series of interviews with the teachers and what they think of the Korean students in the school, interviews with fellow Korean students and what their experiences of the school were and interviews with some of their other friends on what they think of the Korean students. From the interviews conducted during the project and from film footage, an opinion seemed to be forming among the students’ friends and that was that they were very jealous of their friends. Maybe it was because the Korean students had three days out of lessons which, to be frank, any student at school would be jealous of. But some of CCC’s students who came into the project area during break and lunchtimes, genuinely seemed impressed by the work their peers were doing and were somewhat jealous. The opportunity to learn and teach in new and innovative ways is not only what Ultralab does best but it seems it could be the way forward in nationwide education.

The main application that was used to create the video was a programme called iMovie. iMovie was used to edit and subtitle the pre recorded footage that was used in the live broadcast. Wirecast was the software used to stream the live broadcast. This software (from Vara Software) allows for multi shots and screens to be used to give the effect of a live broadcast, much like a news broadcast. Wirecast allows you to cut together live and pre-recorded material. It uses Quicktime Streaming so that the film can be watched live over the internet or put into a webpage where the film can be accessed. The students used the idea of a live broadcast for their film, and nominated a student to introduce and sign off the film.

The feedback from Matt and Neil at the end of the project was positive and both commented on how it was one of the best school-based projects they had been involved in. The film will be submitted into the BAFTA Interactive Festival as an example of a project where Ultralab offer school children a new way of learning. The film will be put on a BAFTA Interactive Festival DVD and will be seen by people all over the world. The project was not only a success in the quality of the film and the worldwide recognition the College will receive but also convinced the College to invest in a new Apple Macintosh computer and digital cameras so the school can expand its IT department and have similar projects running with students from other foreign nationalities. As some of the interviews with the Korean students suggest, most of them would like to do these kinds of activities again, and just from being around these students it is easy to pick up that what Matt and Neil have taught them will stay with them and will hopefully come back to them at a later time and inspire them all over again.

View the event pictures.

Profile.

What is your name?
Yerin

How old are you?
14

What part of Korea are you from?
Cheong ju

When did you come to England?
Christmas time (6 months)

Do you live here with your parents?
Yes

How many brothers and sisters do you have?
2 brothers

What are your hobbies?
Listening to music

What was the most fun part of this project?
Recording and filming

What was the most boring?
Nothing, it was all fun

What do your other friends in the school think about the project?
They think its interesting and fun, they want to do it.

What was it like when you first started at the college?
Scary, I was nervous

Did each of you have different role or was it a joint project?
We did it all together

Have you used equipment like this before or is it a new thing that you are learning?
No, this was the first time

Would you like to do something like this in the future?
Yes

Now the school has a computer to help you make more films, would you be able to do this again and teach other people?
With the others I could show my friends what to do.

Profile.

What is your name?
Si-hyung Seong

How old are you?
15

What part of Korea are you from?
Seoul

When did you come to England?
2 year half month

Do you live here with your parents?
Yep

How many brothers and sisters do you have?
2 brothers

What are your hobbies?
Drawing play games

What was the most fun part of this project?
Recording

What was the most boring?
Waiting around

What do your other friends in the school think about the project?
Jealous because I’m not in classes, interesting

What was it like when you first started at the college?
Stressed, exciting

Did each of you have different role or was it a joint project?
Did recording

Have you used equipment like this before or is it a new thing that you are learning?
No

Would you like to do something like this in the future?
Yes

Now the school has a computer to help you make more films, would you be able to do this again and teach other people?
Yes

Profile.

What is your name?
Eunju

How old are you?
14

What part of Korea are you from?
Musan

When did you come to England?
One year ago

Do you live here with your parents?
Yes

How many brothers and sisters do you have?
One brother

What are your hobbies?
Listen to music

What was the most fun part of this project?
Recording

What was the most boring
No

What do your other friends in the school think about the project?
Envy us

What was it like when you first started at the college?
Enjoys it

Did each of you have different role or was it a joint project?
Joint project

Have you used equipment like this before or is it a new thing that you are learning?
I have done this before

Would you like to do something like this in the future?
No

Now the school has a computer to help you make more films, would you be able to do this again and teach other people?
No

Report by Jo Fletcher, event journalist.

Today some of the Ultralab team spent their time working at the big ‘Be Very Afraid’ event at BAFTA. Ultralab played host to a morning celebration of student and children’s digital creativity.

The event was supported by funding from the DfES and showcased stunning digital creativity.

Students from ten schools, colleges and universities invited questions from the visiting guests, BAFTA members, and from the media to discuss their achievements and demonstrate why the audience should be very afraid of them.

Apple Computer provided equipment for the event.

Professor Stephen Heppell managed the celebration expressing his ideas for next steps.

View some of the pictures taken at the event.

All the young people who took part in the ‘Input CBBC’ project in Sheffield and Hull headed on coaches to BBC Television Centre to spend the day celebrating the hard work undertaken on the project.

Late last year the young people from schools, city learning and community centres were invited to participate in an Ultralab/BBC Research Project which would investigate what young peoples television would be like if young people made it themselves without the intervention of adults.

Computers and cameras where placed in the centres the young people would be working from and time was given on the BBC’s Digital Channel if the work created is ‘good enough for broadcast’.

The participants spent some time touring the various television studios at TVC, spending some time in the Blue Peter studio, and Top of the Pops. Some of the young people were filmed while in the Blue Peter Garden.

View some of the pictures taken at the event.

The research project is incredibly important for Digital Creativity, such an important organisation such as the BBC getting behind user generated content is a huge step for us, and we’re expecting an explosion of projects from this point onward focusing on creativity using information technology.

The young people spent the day at TV Centre sharing their work with a wider BBC audience, two of the participants went on television to talk about the work they have been doing, here they are:

 Input CBBC on BBC xChange Programme: Play Now | Play in Popup

16 of the researchers from Summer School 2001 went on to be the only children at the BETT show in London, a teaching and trade fair held at Olympia in January with 22,000 visitors over a four day period. The researchers worked on the ‘BETT Goes to the Movies’ feature, demonstrating to the visitors at the show the potential that can be achieved with digital technology.

The Researchers made films which were broadcast on screens all around the show. Check out the show report here.

Watch this movie made by the young people at the show while they were working with us.

Four students from Colbayns High School, Clacton, Essex pioneered the way in internet broadcasting at the BETT show (British Education and Training Technology) at Olympia, London (Wednesday 9th to Saturday 12th January). Donna Taylor, Donna Cassidy, Lisa McCormack and Becky Hazell broadcast live video footage produced daily by visiting schools and art groups. The BETT event, which has been running since 1984 was attended by 22,000 visitors from all over the world and is attended by key dignitaries within the education field for this country. The eight hour daily broadcast entertained visitors at the first-floor stand and also in the food court downstairs with work created hourly by children filiming and editing at the show and live cameras showing the visiting school and community groups at work.

The software used for the broadcasting, ‘LiveChannel’, is newly developed in Israel by ChannelStorm (http://www.channelstorm.com)and is tipped to revolutionise and democratise the way students broadcast moving video image. Ultralab (http://www.cleveratom.co.uk), the leading learning technology research centre, based at APU in Chelmsford, responsible for organising the broadcasting event for the show is extremely proud of the achievements of the Colbayns pupils as was Phil Langshaw, Head of Creative Arts & Media at Colbayns school. After a short training session at Ultralab, no more than one hour, the four pupils were technically competent broadcasters and having started, they can confront all the issues facing professional broadcasters - a challenge they savoured. This software has much potential, including the opportunity for schools to quickly and easily set up their own broadcasting TV stations using the Internet to reach a worldwide audience. Richard Millwood, reader and Apple Distinguished Educator at Ultralab said “The main purpose will be to act as focus for tv and radio broadcasting on the net which requires a different, quick thinking, decision making, on-the-fly mentality compared to the more considered composition with iMovie. Also it will provide a series of deadlines for broadcasting events which we intend will stimulate creativity for iMovie compositions, not to say the ability to cut between two live cameras, an audio input and a titling overlay to add life to the whole shebang!”.

Richard Millwood and Phil Langshaw intend to develop the use of LiveChannel in a joint project between Ultralab and Colbayns High School to be carried out in the summer term and subsequently throughout the academic year 2002-2003 and are currently looking for sponsors to enhance their proposals.
Click to view a Quicktime slide show movie made by David Baugh.

Information:
- BETT Goes to the Movies was the feature stand at BETT 2002
- It was a partnership between BFI (British Film Institute) Education, Film Education, Apple and Ultralab
- It was sponsored and supported by Apple, Canon, Emap (BETT organisers) and Oracle
- the event was active from Wednesday 7th to Saturday the 10th of January
- On each day, visiting students engaged in a range of film making activities:
- Wednesday - YCTV (Youth Culture Television)
- Thursday - Film and Video Workshop
- Friday - SEEVEAZ (South East England Virtual Education Action Zone) with Ultralab
- Saturday - WAC (Weekend Arts College)

Throughout the show, four sixth form students from Colbayns High School in Clacton operated an internet broadcasting station
They broadcast using ChannelStorm’s LiveChannel software facilitated by Ultralab
Richard Millwood, Matthew Eaves, Hamish Scott-Brown from Ultralab supported the stand and fellow Apple Distinguished Educator David Baugh also supported the activities.

Staff from BFI Education and Film Education developed movie editing material based on the film Monsters Inc and on archive footage of the suffragett movement.

The stand also offered a showcase for BFI Education and Film Education materials and products.

View the Photographs taken at the event here.

Comments:

Sean O’Sullivan:
“..how cool is that Live Broadcast software? Those pupils from the
school with Ultralab were doing some great stuff, and the
software strikes me as a fantastic idea waiting to be applied. These guys
were already doing great things with it, but I can’t help thinking that
being able to broadcast work like this will have some amazing ways of being
used that frustratingly I just can’t think what they are yet!”

Jack Kenny:
“Best thing in the show.”

SEEVEAZ Summer School researchers:
“I really enjoyed it on Friday I thought it went really well and I hope you
liked the show-report by me Luke, Stevie and Vicky.”

“Well done to you all the team at ULTRALAB who helped put the stand and
everything together!!!!!!! WELL DONE!!!!!!!!”