More in the Mercury

http://www.thewestonmercury.co.uk/content/twm/education/story.aspx?brand=Westonmercury&category=education&tBrand=westonmercury&tCategory=education&itemid=WeED05 May 2010 16:22:36:910

www = Watching Web Walks

Today Jane and Jackie were in Weston to show the website walks gallery to the Sand Point walkers from the three different schools, to encourage reflection on this different way of experiencing the walk, and to gather feedback which will be added to the web gallery.

Here's a quick preview from one of the Locking walkers..

"When I got on the hilltop there was very long grass, I was excited. It was very wet, muddy and cold but still was fun. My walk was amazing, fantastic and I felt free. I felt the music was elegant, scary and calm. The place and music made me feel excited, amazed and freedom. My favourite thing was not being at school!!!"

http://www.stratacollective.org/soundlines/playback/index.php?logfile=porkchop_30-03-10-10-11

Soundlines Create and Connect

Today was our Soundlines: Media Goes Mobile! workshop for BBC Blast's Create & Connect conference at @Bristol. Aimed at school students and staff, in particular to inspire their approach to the new creative media diploma for 14-16 year olds.

The hour-and-a-half session was overflowing (34 people) with more turned away - great to have so much interest in Soundlines!

I started my workshop with an introduction to Strata and Soundlines, how it has worked with the Weston schools, and fits with the diploma and Arts Award. A bit of background - mscape, create-a-scape, filmmaking mediascapes with e-merge and Something More. A bit of context, creativity, engagement, supprot and equipment from the pervasive media studio.
Then we moved on to Sand Point taster activities - a taste of interpreting landscape through stories, acting and animation, to a slideshow of images from the Point. None of the participants had been to Sand Point, and only a few to Weston, but they responded well to the challenge of conveying stories from the place to the rest of the group.

Then we went outside for a mobile media experience in Anchor and Millennium Squares, complete with ipaqs and headphones, and even a little brighter break in the weather! I'd remapped the audio from Sand Point to areas around the squares - water features, markings in the paving stones, statues, walkways and the Big Screen. At Sand Point the visual experience is all about looking at the land. In Bristol it seemed important to bring Sand Point and the Weston students' interpretations into the view, so the 70 or so regions triggered 50 different animation clips (boiling landscapes from our animation workshop, which will be featured on the Soundlines website shortly), playing as the walkers explored the space and sounds.

After the walk, and checking back in all the ipaqs and headphones, we had a preview peek at the website, and then brain-stormed responses to the Soundlines experience, and ideas for what these students would want to work on -  if they were to take part in a media goes mobile project - at school or with Strata!

Thanks to Lis, music teacher from BristolMet, for the photos and feedback:

"Lovely to meet you too. We have used lots of ideas that came out of your workshop already. Good luck with the premier."

Creative apprenticeships: young people, creative media and heritage in Wiltshire

Great to see these new opportunities in Wiltshire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RebXFnp8lhk for video
and
http://www.mla.gov.uk/~/media/South_West/Files/2010/Wiltshire_Creative_Apprenticeship_vacancies.ashx
for a leaflet

Mscape Workshop

On Monday 18th January we welcomed Dr Constance Fleuriot of Featherhouse and the Pervasive Media Studio, to join us for an mscape workshop with Locking students. Despite delays caused by a supermarket fire and road closures, Constance showed the students how to successfully navigate around the mscape toolkit. The apple training room was turned into a pc environment to run the mscape software, and the interactive whiteboard (touchscreen) added to the demonstration! In pairs, the students made their own mscapes - programming regions to trigger music, show photos, use speakers in which the sound gets louder towards a central point, and to use the map aligner to show where they are walking outside. The scapes were rapidly loaded onto ipaqs and tested outside with great success.

Thanks to everyone for another action-packed day of Soundlines!

media box

Now here's another idea - new funding strands announced