global digital creativity research & workshops

Hal MacLean, Shirley Pickford and myself headed to Manchester’s G-Mex arena for the first ever ‘Exciting Minds’ conference and arena by Creative Partnerships.

Shirley and myself represented the ‘Digital Teacher Network‘ which is a free online portal for teachers to manage projects online. 51 other exhibitors shared the arena with us, all based out of inflatable pods, it was really quite remarkable. To our right were Channel Four Learning, over the walkway opposite were the British Council.

Shirley and myself manned the pod all day talking to the other exhibitors, visitors and delegates of the show, which is really quite important. It still amazes me how creativity is not a core part of the British Education system curriculum, it was refreshing to read the words of Tessa Jowell after her keynote speech (See here).

Professor Stephen Heppell, founder of Ultralab and Director of Heppell.net also spoke on the future of creativity in education. In the sessions Hal MacLean from our team spoke to an audience on the future of school design, reflecting on his extensive experience in the field, relating the national and international case studies on what is good and indeed needs work where learning space design is concerned. On his return to the arena Hal spent the afternoon at the Digital Teacher Network pod speaking with the delegates that followed him back from his talk.

It was great to once again spend the day working with Shirley who delighted the audiences with examples of creativity use within education, reflecting on her experiences which date back to the Tesco School Net 2000 project, Shirley was the Millennium Dome based representative for that creativity central project.

It was also nice to see so many friends turning up and exploring the arena.

View the pictures of the event taken by the Creative Partnerships team.

Did you see us on BBC Blast this morning on BBC 2?

Hal MacLean and myself were interviewed for the programme, you’ll also see how we undertake our Summer School programme of activities.

Here is our section of the programme:

 BBC Blast - 4 November 2004: Play Now | Play in Popup

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.

An audience of three hundred attended the 4th annual Summer School creativity celebration at the Victoria & Albert museum in London. The event, which showcases the movies by the children is projected in the V&A’s prestigious lecture theatre, which they then defend from questions from the audience was an amazing experience, as ever, for all involved.

The event, run in conjunction with SEEVEAZ was broadcast internationally over the Internet. Neil Boughen, technician at the event and his team put on exceptional technical performance made perfect by the input, interaction and positive comments from the audience.

Prior to the presentation, hosted by Professor Stephen Heppell was the work from around the world, including the project in conjunction with TVNZ (New Zealand), the Belfast peace project and a movie from our friends in Singapore was shown and well received by the audience.

Once again Ultralab’s SMS service accepted over 400 text messages from the audience, who were able to text to a big screen throughout the event.

For the first time Notschool.net joined the project, producing three excellent movies.

Greg Childs, from Childrens BBC, guest speaker at the event commented on how the work the children were doing really did matter to the future of British Television.

Ultralab and SEEVEAZ would like to thank once again the team at the V&A for their support in the project, and to the Children for their once again exceptional, head turning, internationally renowned creativity.

Each child went home with a certificate, DVD containing their work, a Summer School branded hoodie, and the memories. The Ultralab team enjoyed a Pizza Hut on the way home!

This year saw the ‘SummerSchool’ and ‘Input CBBC’ projects quoted in a chapter written by Professor Stephen Heppell in Whither Assessment?, a QCA publication addressing how the educational community could improve the ways in which it assesses students. An extract coving the creative wins from SummerSchool:

Here is an extract:

LESSONS LEARNED:

This annual feast of creativity confirms several key lessons for assessment. Firstly, it is clear that the entirely new tasks set annually do not map easily, if indeed at all, onto any pretence of criterion referencing. There is not even an existing genre to pastiche; this is entirely new work, yet technology has allowed the summer school students into the domain of experts very early in their learning lives. It is also clear and valid judgements about quality to the extent of being clear about what is ‘good enough’. Beyond that , however, the key feedback from students reporting their processes (for example in the formal interview and ‘crit’ that is a part of their V&A show) is criical to injecting any granularity of judgement beyond that ‘good enough’ hurdle. The product in every case was engaging, but the reported processes offered a fresh perspective, often stunning, always moving our understandings forwards.

Describing the construction of the final pieces enabled the deconstruction and critiquing to be a much more subtle affair. Finally, the clear sense of impending audience served not only as a prime motivator, but was a useful adjunct to the learning process. (page 111)

Whither Assessment? (Chapter 9) ~ Assessment and new technology: new straitjackets or new opportunities? ~ Professor Stephen Heppell

ISBN 1858385016, Paperback 176 pages (January 31, 2003)
Publisher: Qualifications & Curriculum Authority

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

On 19 January 2001 the very creative SEEVEAZ Summer School researchers came together at Burnham-on-Crouch Lifeboat Station to assist with Ultralab’s joint project with the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) to come up with ideas how the lifeboat service could be made ‘cool’ in the eyes of young people.

Team:
Stephen Heppell (Ultralab)
Matthew Eaves (Ultralab)
James Vaughan (RNLI)
Anne Millman (RNLI)

The below films will take some time to load, please be patient:

 Watch the RNLI project movie, with early Matthew Eaves and Colin Elsey footage.: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Watch 180 people the movie - made by Matthew Eaves this film includes nearly everyone who was a part of the Lifeboats.TV project.: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Filmed and made in Burnham this film was created to initiate the project vision.: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Also by George, a dramatic cut using RNLI archive footage: Cut 21 Movie. It was made from a lot of archive training video footage, the objective to demonstrate to the RNLI that existing footage could be recycled.: Play Now | Play in Popup

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