global digital creativity research & workshops

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.

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.

Neil Boughen and myself headed into London today to demonstrate Ultralab’s work in Digital Creativity to an audience during the half time interval for BECTA’s conference on Digital Creativity. Ultralab’s international work was showcased to interested participants. Also demonstrating projects were Cambridge University and Nesta Futurelab.

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

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