global digital creativity research & workshops

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.

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:

Today I headed off to Hull with Richard Millwood to visit the schools involved in the Input CBBC project. The young people have now completed their film work and presented it to us. For the past four months the young people have been making films for the project, which is research by the BBC and Ultralab to find out what television would be like if young people made it themselves. The Hull part of the project was extended due to time constraints for some of the young people.

A research findings report is being written by Ultralab and the BBC on the project and will be published for internal consumption shortly.

The work will be celebrated in London at BBC Television Centre next month.

View some pictures taken on the day here.

Ultralab has been working with young people for the past two years using the latest free movie making software and Apple computers. The BBC attended the 2001 V&A Event at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Greg Childs, head of BBC’s Future TV spoke about how the BBC would need to adapt to meet the demands of changing audience capabilities and employed the Ultralab team to work in collaboration with the BBC to explore the future of children’s television.

Stephen Heppell, Richard Millwood and Matthew Eaves have been spending a lot of time in meetings at Television centre with the ‘Future TV’ team.

Here are the pictures from the Blue Peter Garden, taken my Matthew and Richard on their tour.

Richard and Matthew also visited the Top of the Pops and Blue Peter TV Studios.

The rest of the day was spent talking about how young people used technology for creative purpose and the potential places across the North of England where research with young people could begin using the Ultralab model.

The Input CBBC website is online here.