global digital creativity research & workshops

Although Ultralab is now not my employer (Click here to find out why) the company I now work for will continue the work we started at Ultralab in the field of Digital Creativity. Cleveratom Ltd will continue to undertake groundbreaking global research into how learning can be made better using new and emerging technologies. The example work below is exactly the kind of stuff Cleveratom now does, along with online social software and school design.

Find out how the BBC 2 Wales ident animations were created by visiting this link.

Here are the finished products that were a part of the Christmas festive season on BBC 2W, linking in between each programme on the network. All made in clay and by six year old children, you really need to watch these, click ‘Play Now’ below!!!:

 Watch the Animations! [1:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Watch the BBC TV show about how the animations were created!: Play Now | Play in Popup

Hal MacLean and myself spent this evening with the young people and their families from the Bromley Learning Alliance 2006 Summer School, in Bromley. We headed down to celebrate the animation work created by the young people over the summer months.

The challenge which was set back in July this year was to create a modern day comic book, in animation, photography, sound and film.  The ‘tough task’ was called ‘Twist of Fate’ and had ‘no right answer’, as ever.  The young people are giving an induction session to the technology and project, they then return to their collective schools over the summer to undertake the challenge.
We have been working with Merril Haeusler (Director) of the BLA since her days with SEEVEAZ (South East of England Virtual Education Action Zone). It was refreshing to see Merril at the event, and hearing her relate back to the early days back in 2000 when she first launched the project with us. If it had not been for the investment by Merril both financially, and more importantly her belief in what young people can do with creative technoloies I really do question where we would be today. As my last official presentation event for Ultralab it was nice to be in the company with Merrill, who was at my first ever Ultralab engagement back in 2000, at the Millennium Dome in London (Read about it here).

We’ve come a long way since that early project, travelled the world, impacted on broadcasters, governments, education establishments and policy makers. We still have a lot of work to do, together.

So here they are, the creative comics created under the banner of ‘Twist of Fate’ by the tallented young people of the Bromley area, enjoy:

 Changing Dreams: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Space Pigs: Play Now | Play in Popup
 The Restless Race: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Twist of Fate: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Unlucky Lottery Ticket: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Wacky William: Play Now | Play in Popup
 World Cup 2006: Play Now | Play in Popup

The 14th, 15th and 16th of November now stand out as some of the best days in my career so far. We’ve worked long and hard to persue governments, broadcasters and education institutions to promote the fact that children are very creative when united with the power of enabling technologies.

BBC Wales initiated a pilot project to find out what idents could look like if Children created idents themselves, using stop frame clay animation.

I spent last Wednesday (8 November) at BBC Broadcasting House in Cardiff working with various team members from 2W to work out how the technology being used could be enabled for 16:9 (widescreen) viewing. To the right is how the ident will be placed on the work created by the children. We have decided to use Apple Computers running iStopMotion animation software and Sony XM1 camera technology. All of the work will be created in widescreen, our experiment worked. It has been decided that the background the children will animate in front of will be yellow, music will also be added in post production.So how would a six year old make an ident anyway?

Geraint Lang from the team and myself spent three enjoyable days at Caerleon Infant School near Newport, Wales, with Susan Wood and her team from BBC Wales. The demountable classroom had been tranformed for the event which would see young people creating the idents for BBC 2W (the Welsh version of BBC 2 in Wales).

Geraint and I spent the Tuesday afternoon with the group of thirty young people talking to them about animation and what the challenge was that they had been set.

On Wednesday and Thursday we took the now split group of children (15 per day) forward providing them with the clay, technology (computers and cameras) and backdrop to generate their animations.

Over the three day period the young people were challenged to make a 12 second animation in clay on a yellow background, the title they were challenged to make was ‘What Christmas means to me’. Snowmen, Father Christmas, Sledges, Presents and even Santa in the Bath were all created and constructed.

The music for the animations, which is rumoured to be ‘Jingle Bells’ will be recorded at a nearby Secondary School. The animations will hopefully be a part of the Christmas schedule for BBC 2W, the background of programme announcements.
As previously posted Hal MacLean and myself had conducted the research for this project at the Cressing Primary School, near Braintree, Essex.

Here are three of the completed 37 animations, minus the 2W logo which is soon to be added:

 Father Christmas Eating his Dinner: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Snowman Football: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Snowman Walking: Play Now | Play in Popup

I spent today (Friday 27th October) and yesterday at BBC Northern Ireland in Belfast working with the BBC Blast team on a new pilot project for BBC One NI’s Mental Health Campaign.

I worked closely with Emma Majury and Rod from the local college to create a 90 second animation which followed a soundbite story of a person who had recovered from depression.

We spent Thursday planning, Friday morning buliding sets and the afternoon animating. We filmed the entire sequence in reverse scene order, then strung it together in iMovie and added the sound.

I have previously worked in Northern Ireland on the BBC Blast Truck in 2006 with Emma and the team, in 2003 Richard Millwood, Anthony Russell, Martin Doherty and myself undertook a cross-community summer school programme.

 View the first draft of the movie with sound: Play Now | Play in Popup
 View the completed movie with sound and music: Play Now | Play in Popup

Hal MacLean and Matthew Eaves from the team spent the day with Class 2 at Cressing Primary School to undertake some experimental research into clay animation with six year olds. Mrs Harris and her classroom assistants were a great help throughout the day as fourteen six year old pupils took part.

Click the above images to enlarge them.

The objective of the day was to find out how six year olds coped with an animation task, learning the skills of model making, story construction and then using computers and digital video camera equipment to animate their story.

The session was the pilot for a larger project which will be held in Cardiff next month, which we will post more about here at digitalcreativity.org when the time comes.

Hal and myself will be writing a paper on our findings. The learning from this experiment has already changed our plans for BBC Wales.

Everyone involved in the project will recieve their creative work on DVD, created using iDVD, here is a screenshot of the DVD in production:

(Click image to enlarge)

We would like to thank Sue Giles, Head Teacher at the school for welcoming us into the school at such short notice.

Here are the files created on the day:

 Group 1 (Animation 1): Play Now | Play in Popup
 Group 1 (Animation 2): Play Now | Play in Popup
 Group 2: Play Now | Play in Popup
 Group 3 (Animation 1): Play Now | Play in Popup
 Group 3 (Animation 2): Play Now | Play in Popup
 Group 4 (Animation 1): Play Now | Play in Popup
 Group 4 (Animation 2): Play Now | Play in Popup
 Ultralab Example : Play Now | Play in Popup
 Meanwhile Martin Hodder at Ravens Wood School in Bromley, Kent created this brilliant experimental animation:: Play Now | Play in Popup

Today the Saffron Walden County High School and Partner Primary Schools came to Ultralab to spend the day with myself and Hal MacLean to work on the DVD case designs of their Summer School project. For this challenge the young people involved in the project learned how to work with the Photo Shop application.

Thirty young people spent the day at the lab, showcasing the work they had achieved over the summer period. The work will go on display to an evening audience at a cinema in Cambridge later this year.

Some of the young people were tasked with making a DVD containing all of the work, this process was done using Apple’s iDVD.

Click here to read about the first time the group of young people were at Ultralab for their training session and challenge setting exercise.

Click here to read about the First Day of the Summer School on August 3rd.

Here is the DVD art created by the groups, while at Ultralab, to reflect the content of their completed films:

Click to expand the images.

Some of the groups also completed a DVD Disc image:

The Summer Challenge, which is set by Ultralab was called “Outside the Box”.

We invite the young people on the project to add comments below to introduce their work before we actually post their completed projects here on the site.

Well done everyone, exceptional work.

Hal and Matt attended the Bromley Learning Alliance centre to round up and celebrate the work that the children were doing over the summer in their ’summer project’.

Without a doubt these were films of a very high quality, and were made by children still in primary schools (mainly).

The challenge was ‘A Twist of Fate’ and had to be a nine section piece of work combining different genres into a video ‘comic’ show.

We were absolutely delighted with the interpretations of the task, which once again reinforced the notion that the technology we are inviting people to use is empowering them to say something, rather than daunting them in its use.

Well done, Bromley - superb work!

We’ll be arranging the grand celebration event over the next few weeks and look forward to seeing you there.

Hamish Scott-Brown, Hal MacLean and myself enjoyed ourselves all summer on the 2006 BBC Blast National Truck Tour. Here are the highlights:

 Watch the BBC Blast Tour 2006 Short Movie: Play Now | Play in Popup

The BBC Blast Truck is being supported by the Ultralab team for a tour around the UK undertaking creative outreach work with young people.

The big grey trucks rolled into Hull and were situated in Hull College car park for a two day visit with extended hours. The truck acted as a drop in centre for young people wishing to experiment with digital creativity, dance, music and ethical fashion. Bookings were also taken though the BBC Blast website. The venue was run by Paul from Connexions Humber in association with the BBC. Sadly it rained for the duration of the visit.

I ran classes in clay animation, digital photography, silent movies and creating comics.

It was really nice to be back in Hull, this is not the first time I have worked within the Hull region. In 2004 I was part of the ‘International Certificate in Digital Photography’ (ICDC) project in association with Creative Partnerships Hull.

Back in 2002/3 I worked closely with Richard Millwood, Hamish Scott-Brown and Professor Stephen Heppell of Ultralab on the ‘Input CBBC’ project. We worked in Hull and the North of England region with schools, colleges and community centres to find out what television would be like if young people made it themselves. There is more information on the project on this website.

Hamish Scott-Brown joined the BBC Blast Truck in Newcastle to be Lead Facilitator in a feast of film, animation and music. The event was highly successful for everyone involved.