BBC Blast Colchester

Matt and Hal were delighted to be invited on to the BBC Blast Truck at its last stop in Colchester for 2009. For two days our team ran an internet broadcasting project working with learners to make their own internet television production. During the workshop learners were taught about TV production, camera work, script writing, interviewing and presenting. At the end of the two day workshop the learners presented their live workshop to a live audience within Colchester’s Charter Hall.

The BBC Blast truck is familiar ground for Matt and Hal who in 2006 worked on the truck at every UK location, in 2008 redesigned the vehicles and continue to remain as advisors to the BBC on creativity in learning.

Some images from the event:

BBC Blast Northern Ireland ‘Escape from the Zoo’ Film with NIDYA

I had the pleasure of working Friday the 15th and Saturday the 16th of February in Northern Ireland with our friends at BBC Blast Northern Ireland in Belfast working with NIDYA (Northern Ireland Deaf Youth Association) to create a film about a monkey escaping from the zoo.

My role was to work with the mixed group of teenagers to film the animation section of the film. Working through interpretors we had a great two days animating in a television studio.

The young people involved in the project lived locally, some were deaf. Filming also took part at Belfast Zoo, and the team were challenged to integrate real filming with cuts to animation.

We used a Sony Z1 camera linked up to an Apple computer running the brilliant iStopMotion.

The young people involved in the project demonstrated clear animation talent with lots of ideas and ways of overcoming challenges with the story and continuity. The final animation sequences were quite simply brilliant, well done gang. Big thanks to Sue Barry and her team from NIDYA and also to Emma, Emma and John from Blast.

I’ll link here the completed film when the BBC have finished putting together the final edit.

Some images from the event:

Creative Film School on BBC Blast Truck in Hatfield

I’ve spent the past three days working on the BBC Blast Truck in Hatfield, delivering a Film and Camera Production workshop for young people delivering this workshop each day:

The Truck will stop this year in 30 places, Hatfield was the first location. Last year Hamish, Hal and myself travelled with the truck (under the Ultralab (1990 - 2006) flag) working with the local facilitators to deliver the Blast experience, we ran workshops and supported other facilitators to run theirs.

When I arrived at the venue it was good to see a lot of young people crowded round a DJ from BBC Radio 1xtra, clearly enjoying the experience of learning ‘Radio Production’. My own Film Making workshop was attended by 21 young people, we used Sony Z1 video cameras, learned how to shoot, edit and create a film together. After practicing, each group made their first film ‘Surprise’ within the three hours and were then set the tougher challenge for the following two days.

I challenged the young people were then to make a 100 second film entitled ‘Confusion’. The film had to be exactly 100 seconds long, could only have three lines of dialogue and had to be shot is a way which was modern and not traditional.

The films the young people created were very good, considering none had prior experience in film making.

The youngest participant was nine years old, the oldest, seventeen. The abilities of the young people were so good in both iMovie and Final Cut Pro they finished their work in double quick time and were able to visit some of the other workshops taking place on the truck, filming and documenting what else was happening.

Both myself and the team at digitalcreativity.org have lots of experience running film, animation, creative art and photography workshops and were delighted to be invited on to the truck to pass on our knowledge.

digitalcreativity.org wish the BBC Blast team the very best of success in delivering the 2007 national Blast Truck tour to a further 29 locations.

Networked Identity

During the half term holiday in London Matt and I worked for the BBC running the Networked Identity project in association with 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.

Get Creative at BETT 2007- reflecting on yet another busy show

For the sixth year it was nice to be invited back to be a part of ‘Create at BETT’, the creativity feature at the BETT Show held at London Olympia between the 10th and 13th of January. Create at BETT continues to be the only stand staffed by young people, not selling anything specific.

The feature stand exists to simply demonstrate creative use of technology within learning. Last year BETT attracted 27,000 visitors from all over the world to its two thousand stands.Students from King Harold School were on hand to help visitors make podcasts, using the latest chroma key technology from our friends at Reflecmedia.

Visitors were able to stand in front of a chroma wall with selected moving image being rendered live behind them straight into Apple’s iMovie software.

Click the right hand news article image to read what reporter Stephen Manning from the TES had to say about the young people working on the Create at BETT stand:

The young people working on the stand worked with the show visitors to film their ideas and then upload the newly created podcast file to the Digital Teacher Network (DTN). DTN remains as a free space for creative teachers to manage their projects online.

All the podcasts created on the ‘Create at BETT’ stand can be viewed on the ‘Create at BETT DTN Project‘.

All DTN project media files work with iTunes, and are therefore available to download as podcasts onto iPod technology.At the other end of the stand young people worked to demonstrate the brilliant iStopMotion animation software and the potential for using creative technology in the classroom. iStopMotion is so simple and easy to use, yet so powerful too. A wonderful piece of innovative software.

digitalcreativity.org was represented on the stand working together with the team from BBC Blast and Apple. All these partners believe in creative use of new and emerging technology in learning and we’re proud to work along side them.

I’ve enjoyed the past six years on the stand, clicking here will take you back to the stand in 2002 where we explored web broadcasting technologies.

We’ve done something new and experimental on the stand every year since, it has always been staffed by young people. Here is last years article on BETT 2006.

digitalcreativity.org’s Alex and Jamie Harris were on hand to support visitors wanting to learn more about the potential of enabling technologies. Alex built Digital Teacher Network from Open Source Software and spent a lot of time explaining to visitors how it worked and what they could do with it. Maureen Gurr was on hand to look after the young people, Fiona from Impact also did an amazing logistical job to make it all happen.

digitalcreativity.org staff have also worked closely with David Baugh and BBC Blast to support the young people prior to coming to the show. The training session held before Christmas in the BBC’s 21CC (21st Century Classroom) were a huge success. Creativity and School Learning Space Design Consultant, Hal MacLean reflects on the performance of the young people:

As ever, King Harold School pupils were brilliant! Their enthusiasm, infectious energy and determination to succeed meant that the stand never had a dull moment. Many thanks to Malcolm Burnett for organising the group and being there with them.

Read more of what Hal has to say here.

View Hal’s Best Pictures from BETT 2007

Some images from the event:

View even more of Hal’s Pictures from BETT 2007

Check out some of the podcasts below:

BBC Northern Ireland Mental Health Campaign Pilot… in animation!

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. Here it is, as broadcast on BBC 1 Northern Ireland:

BBC Blast Truck in Hull 31st August and 1st of September 2006

The BBC Blast Truck is being supported by the Ultralab (1990 - 2006) 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, Hamish and Professor Stephen Heppell of Ultralab (1990 - 2006) 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.

BBC Blast Truck in Newcastle 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st of August

Hamish 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.

BBC Blast Truck in Glasgow 11th and 12th of August

Hamish headed to his native Glasgow for a couple of days onboard the BBC Blast Truck as facilitator. Hamish’s role as Lead Facilitator is to lead creative workshops while supporting local facilitators as they come onboard the truck to run their own creative classes. Glasgow was a huge success for BBC Blast with film being a particular favorite of the Glasgow young people.

BBC Blast Truck in Bristol 2nd and 3rd of August

The BBC Blast Truck headed down the M32 Motorway to join Hal MacLean for an exciting two days of film and dance.

Hal represented Ultralab (1990 - 2006) as the lead facilitator at this location. Matthew Eaves, Hamish and Hal MacLean are on a rotation system throughout the tour, doubling up at some locations to support each other at some of the larger events.

Hal was pleased to work with Gail Taylor, who worked herself on an Ultralab (1990 - 2006) project back in 2002 called ‘The Online Soap’. Hal also spent time working with friend of Ultralab (1990 - 2006) Samantha Beddoes who filmed Hal and myself back in 2004 for BBC Blast’s November TV show, Sam now works for BBC Newsround and worked closely with Hal on Final Cut Pro, Apple’s film editing software.