global digital creativity research & workshops

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.

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.

The Ultralab team works each year on the ‘Create at BETT’ stand at the BETT show. The show is attended by 26,000 visitors each year and has over 2000 stands. The Create at BETT stand is supported by Apple Computer and staffed by Ultralab. Our friends from BBC Blast joined the stand for the first year to promote young peoples creativity.

Ultralab’s partner schools King Harold School and Saffron Walden County High School assisted on the stand providing young people to demonstrate to the visitors podcasting, animation, sound and vision technologies.

Jane Down from the Ultralab team spent BETT working in the NAACE Lounge demonstrating Podcasting to NAACE members.

View the pictures from the show.

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!

For the first time ever the Ultralab Digital Creativity Summer School programme went international. The project went to Northern Ireland, working as part of the peace process with Catholic and Protestant children to see what could be created using the Summer School model over a three day period within a community environment. The results were excellent. The group were the very first to undertake the ‘Points of View 2 (Squared) challenge. The project lasted three days.

Five excellent movies were created in just three days. The majority of the Summer School Researchers in Belfast had never used video equipment and Apple computers before. The movies are fantastic, the films being about bullying, being a young child, the view of a motorcyclist, a mouse and a blade of grass.

“As youth leaders from across the community divide we knew each other but we had never worked together. Ultralab’s summer school gave us that opportunity.” Stuart (Youth Leader)

“The kids were together, focused on making films rather on what divides them” Kelly (Youth Leader).

View some of the pictures taken during the event.

Watch the completed movies here:

Mark Constable, Richard Millwood and myself headed to Weymouth to install the web camera for the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution)’s Lifeboats.TV project, run by Ultralab.

The project is near completion and the web camera will provide an eye for young people visiting the website to explore live images from a lifeboat station.

View some pictures taken at Weymouth Lifeboat Station on the day of the installation.

The project is really pioneering for the RNLI who are exploring with Ultralab how digital creativity technologies can be used to engage the younger audience with the work of the RNLI.

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.

On the 6th and 7th of March 2002 the Ultralab digital creativity team were based on the Southend Pier for the Lifeboats.TV project.

All the research conducted so far on this project has been done in conjunction with young people, exploring how creative use of technology could be used to enhance their learning, bringing the RNLI bang up to date with its uses of technology at the same time.

Southend Lifeboat Station became the fifth location for the Lifeboats.TV crew. The lifeboat station is based at the end of a pier and Matthew Eaves and Richard Millwood commented as they walked the mile pier journey that this was their strangest journey to work.

The crew were excellent and lots of footage was captured at this location, all in aid of the RNLI’s new Lifeboats.TV site, a way for the RNLI to reach its young audience using creative technologies.

Watch crew member Lance explain why the lifeboat station is based at the end of a pier..

Team:
Matthew Eaves (Ultralab)
Colin Elsey (Ultralab)
Richard Millwood (Ultralab)
Micky Slatford (RNLI)
Peter Bradley (RNLI)

View the pictures taken at the Southend Lifeboat Station.