global digital creativity research & workshops

Hal MacLean, Shirley Pickford and myself headed to Manchester’s G-Mex arena for the first ever ‘Exciting Minds’ conference and arena by Creative Partnerships.

Shirley and myself represented the ‘Digital Teacher Network‘ which is a free online portal for teachers to manage projects online. 51 other exhibitors shared the arena with us, all based out of inflatable pods, it was really quite remarkable. To our right were Channel Four Learning, over the walkway opposite were the British Council.

Shirley and myself manned the pod all day talking to the other exhibitors, visitors and delegates of the show, which is really quite important. It still amazes me how creativity is not a core part of the British Education system curriculum, it was refreshing to read the words of Tessa Jowell after her keynote speech (See here).

Professor Stephen Heppell, founder of Ultralab and Director of Heppell.net also spoke on the future of creativity in education. In the sessions Hal MacLean from our team spoke to an audience on the future of school design, reflecting on his extensive experience in the field, relating the national and international case studies on what is good and indeed needs work where learning space design is concerned. On his return to the arena Hal spent the afternoon at the Digital Teacher Network pod speaking with the delegates that followed him back from his talk.

It was great to once again spend the day working with Shirley who delighted the audiences with examples of creativity use within education, reflecting on her experiences which date back to the Tesco School Net 2000 project, Shirley was the Millennium Dome based representative for that creativity central project.

It was also nice to see so many friends turning up and exploring the arena.

View the pictures of the event taken by the Creative Partnerships team.

It was great to be joined once again by Ultralab’s Shiley Pickford as the BBC Blast Truck rolled into Albert Square in Manchester for a fun packed four days of Animation, Film, Music, Poetry and Dance. A big stage was hired in Albert Square for some of the young people to perform on in front of a large audience. On the last day of the event was the famous England v Portugal football game, after the young people had gone home the BBC Blast team sat on the back of the support truck huddled around a tiny TV to watch England lose on penalties again.

View some of the pictures taken in Manchester.

I have been working on the BBC Blast Truck at its first location ever at Liverpool’s Mann Island. Ultralab are working on board the BBC Blast Truck to provide a facilitation roll, while running creativity workshops for young people.

These past few days on the BBC truck have been amazing. I’m really proud to have been a part of the very first location for BBC Blast on Tour, this project is so important to those it reaches.

I’ve worked with some of the finest users of technology for creative purpose in the UK. In a nutshell, anyone who’s anyone in Digital Creativity local to the truck stops… is being asked to run workshops with local young people….in DJing, VJing, Filming, Dance, Animation, Hip Hop, MCing, Poetry, Creative Writing and loads loads more…. We’ve even had the head make-up artist at Mersey TV’s Hollyoaks programme making up the faces of our young people.

I’ve seen young people writing and singing songs from scratch in just two hours, to a live audience……oh and by the way, they could not hum a note prior to the workshop….

I watched in awe as our Shirley Pickford and Levi Tafari ran an urban poet class in Liverpool …. as young people, who started out shy stood up and read out their creative writing poems with passion and pride to an audience….

I saw tears in a mum’s eye as she proudly watched her daughter excitedly demonstrate her animation to her…

One young lad even ran into town to get some scissors to cut up some card to improve his animation…

Liverpool, an awesome place with an awesome team.

View the photographs taken by me.