global digital creativity research & workshops

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.

Here are the pictures I took over the two day project.

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

Here are the other projects I’ve been involved in Northern Ireland:

• October 2006: BBC Northern Ireland Mental Health Campaign.
• June 2006: BBC Blast Truck, Belfast.
• June 2006: BBC Blast Truck, Derry.
• July 2003: Peace Project Film Project, Belfast.

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

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

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.

Hamish Scott-Brown 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.

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 as the lead facilitator at this location. Matthew Eaves, Hamish Scott-Brown 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 project back in 2002 called ‘The Online Soap’. Hal also spent time working with friend of Ultralab 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.

Riding the crest of a BBC Blast wave, the truck rolled in to Norwich right outside the Forum. There wasn’t enough room to put up the awning, but we had a marquee instead for the dance workshops and music. The main event for me was to work with ‘DJ Swift’ to create a pop video, working with a team of young people who have never handled a video camera before, let alone thought about how a music video is put together!

We had brilliant support from Julian Langham, who normally edits things like Blue Peter - he was a star! Julian gave his time and energy all day long for three days to make sure this project took off.

Also on the team was Louise who presents on Look East… between us we had enough folk to go out into the centre of town and start filming.

There was a lot of local interest in the work, but we spent a lot of time on the top floor of the multi-storey car park… this caused enough of a problem for someone to complain - thinking a bunch of youngsters were up to no good (It’s been a while since I was referred to as a youngster… thanks, whoever you were!). We trekked through the town and into the castle grounds, filming different sections in different places. The best was an underpass, in my opinion, but only because it really seemed to fit the urban landscape of the song.

Using simple reflectors, daylight (boy it was warm) and Sony z1 cameras, we spent two days out filming, plus another editing (well… Julian did). Between locations and shoots we visited the editing suite in BBC Look East, passing by Dr Who’s Tardis and a few Daleks as we went.

In fact, it’s worth mentioning that one spectacular workshop was a radio show where Dr Who landed in the middle of Ambridge, amongst ‘The Archer’s’… very funny, and very topical for the location!

The first night saw the truck crew happily tucking in to a Pizza Express pizza in the forum restaurant when a lightning storm took hold… followed by torrential rain. We found a quick way downstairs out in to the storm, because the site was flooded with two inches of water or more in seconds flat - we really had to shift the equipment off the floor pretty fast! Needless to say we were soaked, so a quick change of crew t-shirts was in order before we could go back to our meal.

This was an outstanding location for BBC Blast and full of fun and excitement. The results for the filming are superb, and there are some fantastic products that have been created.

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.