14 young people, 40 new prototypes - #CultJam15 comes to Bristol!
CC-BY-SA Knowle West Media Centre
Friday, June 12, 2015 was a lucky day. It saw an amazing group of young people aged 13 to 18 from across Bristol coming together at Knowle West Media Centre. The group spent six hours exploring content from Europeana’s digital cultural heritage archive collection and re-using it to create innovative and inspiring prototypes.
In the beginning the group was introduced to the cultural heritage archive, discovering what archives look like and how their content can be re-used. They were told all about prototypes and the formats they come in.
Participants worked in small groups taking part in five workshops facilitated by different creatives: a laser cutter design artist, a playground engineer, a games designer, a clothes designer and a creative arts practitioner. Within each workshop, the young people were given the task of “creating a product that reuses archives and/or enables people to view archives in an interesting way.” From this briefing the young people had 45 minutes to explore the genre, research the archives, come up with an idea, create a prototype and finally present it to the wider team.
During the day, young people created over 40 different prototypes including wireframes, computer aided designs, junk modeling, shoes and clothing adaptions, and laser cut designs, which were then sent down to KWMC's Furniture Factory and cut throughout the day.
Do you want to know what creative ideas those young brains amazed us with?
A chessboard, with 3D printed figures using archive character designs. The chessboard itself was made of simple light and dark archive photographs as the board squares (Louis, 13)
CC-BY-SA Knowle West Media Centre
A 2D computer game called “Time Jump”, targeted at young people aged 10-16. Time Jump takes the gamer through different time periods in different countries, from cave person to robot. As the character goes through the levels, they are placed in front of scenery is made from archive images (e.g. Barcelona streets from 1960s). Challenges and objects within each scene will incorporate archive materials (e.g. the character will wear First World War uniforms taken from a historic photo if jumping through Germany during this time). (Kieran, Casey, Weronike & Nishan, all 13)
CC-BY-SA Knowle West Media Centre
A playground designed using images of archive chocolate wrappers! (Mohamadshakur, 14)
CC-BY-SA Knowle West Media Centre
We gathered some reactions how the young generation liked this Culture Jam Pre-Event:
- I liked the engineering part because it’s cool how you can re-design things out of old scrap
- I liked working at all the workshops as it was fun and interesting trying new things from looking at the archive. Also the food!
- I have learned that you can create amazing things with a laser cutter
- I learnt the meaning of archive and I learnt how to make many different prototype things
Our facilitators praised the fun and highly enthusiastic team. It was a great opportunity to interact and work with the youth and a really good learning experience.
The KWMC Programme Manager (Young People) enjoyed the event as well: “The Jam was great: there was really a positive energy in the room. Most young people had never heard of archives or prototypes before the event, and by the end of the day most of them had given presentations on their re-use of archive to the whole room. I was astounded by some of the prototypes. The young people brought some really innovative, new and exciting ides to the table, and they did it in such a short time. If only we could now make them all!”
Pupils attended the Bristol Jam from the following Schools & Colleges: Bridge Learning Campus, City Academy, Ashton Park, City of Bristol College and Bristol Steiner School.
CC-BY-SA Knowle West Media Centre