Drama in the Dale

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October 1st and 2nd sees 3 workshops taking place in the locations below in the Drama in the Dale production “The Bonny Moorhen”. This is a community play being developed by Jack Drum Arts with community groups to dramatise the Stanhope Riot of 1819

My part in this is to develop additional Digital activities. These include Learning Wikis, Podcasts, Digital Maps and possible webstreaming of the final performance to take place in March 2012. I put together the movie below to show people the activities they can take part in.

Adventure in the Dale

Adding this after the three workshops took place. We arrived at the wonderful Wearhead Primary School on a lovely sunny day (pictures below). We had a smallish number pass through our workshops. Below is one of the songs from the production recorded there.

The next workshop at Wolsingham school was better attended and people participated in the drama and music workshop. Not knowing what to expect I have made a 9 minute film to show people. I decided to cut this down to 4 short pieces for the next workshop. With these workshops being si far from my home I stayed overnight in Blanchland. This is quite close to where I grew up so my parents came to visit. My mother reminded me that my Grandmothers family came from Blanchland and were landed gentry at Newbiggin Hall until the lands reverted to the crown when the male line died out – perhaps more on that later.

On day two we travelled to the 3rd workshop in Stanhope quite close to the Bonnie Moorhen itself. My reworked presentation worked much better. There was a good turn out and the drama and music workshops worked well too. Duncan, one of the Music Directors took us all through a 4 part harmony song. I absolutely loved this. You can hear it below. Unfortunately as the recording device (my smartphone) was in my hands you can hear me the loudest blissfully unaware that I am singing out of tune throughout.



Images from the Weekend (click to enlarge)






October

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I have a slightly altered remit from October 1st and a range of exciting and interesting Community Informatics and Community Media projects starting up.

Drama in the Dales

This project led by Jack Drum Arts is about the creation of a ‘community play’ for Weardale, inspired by the story of ‘The Battle of Stanhope’ as immortalised in the local song “The Bonny Moorhen”.  The ballad tells the story of a group of Weardale lead-miners who, in 1819, in order to avoid starvation, poached game from the royal hunting grounds.  The Prince Bishop was none too pleased and sent his bailiffs up the Dale to rout out the poachers but the whole community came out in force to support the men and the bailiffs were sent packing with their tails between their legs after a riot in The Black Bull Inn, Stanhope. I will add a digital dimension to the project providing educational wikis, podcasting, geo-located media and to facilitate a live web-stream of the ultimate production. The learning wikis will explore other dimensions of the story including the surrounding area, lead mining and the background to the riot.

12 Villages

Bearpark, Bowburn, Brandon, Cassop, Esh Winning, Kelloe, Ludworth, New Brancepeth, Quarington Hill, Sherburn Hill, Ushaw Moor & West Rainton are together a Community Network in County Durham. There are more details at this website www.12villages.co.uk The purpose of the site and the enterprises  that will evolve from it is to add digital, community media, social media activities to physical activities of the network. The villages concerned are considered to be the most deprived in County Durham. The ultimate aim is to create a “Village Hub” that is effectively a “Digital Village Network”


The intention  is to use technology to provide services and development for a group of very rural villages and settlements where physically networking is very difficult. The work will begin with the 5 Westerly villages and will eventually roll out to all 12. The 5 Westerly villages are Bearpark,  Brandon, Esh Winning, New Brancepeth and  Ushaw Moor.

It was a Digital Village that brought me to Teesside back in 2000. A small research unit at Teesside University was working with Trimdon Digital Village and brought me to Teesside to manage Tees Valley Communities Online.  Trimdon Digital Village took part in an infamous online pub quiz between The Black Bull in Trimdon and Timms Coffee House in Skinningrove. [ click here ]. Skinningrove won and took the title “Skinningrove Digital Village” Later the concept was emulated again in County Durham with Hunwick Digital Village and then headed South again in several guises.

CRaNE News

Community radio stations in the North East of England have joined together to form a group to develop and foster a relationship between the individual organisations. The group is called CRaNE (Community Radio Stations in the North East).  I’m working with them to develop a platform for the  radio stations to share news items. [ www.crane-news.co.uk ] This is currently in an experimental stage but there are quite a few possibilities here including live recording into the online interface and “on location” coverage into smart phones. What I also think is exciting is that other people could submit audio clips to the Community Radio consortium for airing. This could be casual submissions or from groups who had received some training (schools, students, community groups etc)

Saltburn Town Executive

Saltburn Town Executive is now run by two Saltburn businesses – Destinations and Rigwood House, Paul Davies and Sue Anderson respectively. I’m providing ICT and Social Media support. This is an exciting opportunity to bring some new ideas to businesses in Saltburn to work smarter and network and collaborate. [ http://saltburntown.co.uk ]

Four Libraries And A Pub

This project will provide Outreach from Destinations@Saltburn to four libraries and a pub in Redcar and Cleveland. The pub is the Toad Hall Arms in Moorsholme and the libraries are: Ormesby, Guisborough, Loftus and Marske. Funded by the Nominet Trust, this is a UK online outreach project to support organisations delivering new digital inclusion activities to new audiences in interesting and innovative locations and will aim to reach people who are not yet online introducing them to “Go On” which is designed to help people who have never used a computer before to make those first steps and then learn how to do a variety of stuff online. We will also be exploring further some experimental work we began with the libraries using a range of Google products in an endeavour to make the libraries more effective digitally and to seek to work smarter using new technology.

Community Media Festival

Over the past several years I’ve facilitated an event at Saltburn Community Theatre that ties in with Animex International Animation and Games Festival. The participants at the Saltburn event tend to also be producers of the content with a matinee for school children and an evening public event hosted by the serving Mayor of Redcar & Cleveland.

The last event showcased a film that had many contributors including community groups, schools, and the police as well as international participants.  The film and some background can be seen here http://bit.ly/nSSSHQ Other animation workshops took place which produced several animated films which were also shown. The evening event was web streamed.

Visitors from Finland who had participated online in the making of the main film came to Saltburn and also ran workshops in Co Durham and East Cleveland. Due to production delays caused by bad weather the event was delayed and did not take place at the same time as Animex. This caused us to think about running a different event related to Animex but not necessarily on the same date as Animex. This could be a Community Media Festival but before I describe this there are a couple of other events to take into consideration.

• The Republic of Uzhupis (Lithuania) independence day http://bit.ly/fYwg2R
• Iron Age to Digital Age OCTORAMA exhibition at Loftus Town Hall http://tvcm.co.uk/ironage/

The Community Media Festival could combine those events and since Uzhupis celebrates it’s independence day on April 1st the event would be in April and could include:

• Uzhupis Independence day online hook-ups.
• An Octorma at Loftus Town Hall
• A “Relaxorama” and other experiences at Rigwood House.
• Digital Workshops at Destinations
• A celebration event at Saltburn Community Theatre
• Other International hook-ups, online and physical

There has been some interest in developing a new film to follow on from last years second life film but perhaps rather than producing it for April 2012 perhaps we could run workshops to develop ideas on storylines etc. More info on this will be added to this page http://bit.ly/nSSSHQ

To preserve the event as it stands, particularly for schools we will still need to run animation workshops to produce content for the Saltburn Theatre showcase event.

Abandoned Places

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One day I’ll finish my “Places in Time” project. Meanwhile I just found an older recording inspired by Henk van Rensbergen’s “Abandoned Places” Website. Henke kindly allowed me to use some of his evocative images to accompany my music for an exhibition in 2002.

The Muse

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I just wiped my Mac and started to reinstate software. Ableton Live and Propellerheads Reason/Record were fine but Cubase would not recognise the dongle. Same problem with my soft synths  Korg M1 and Wavestation (I used to have these synths) and Absynthe. I decided to just use these on the PC and finsh earlier projects on the PC rather than port them over.  I´m aware I allow too many distractions to get in the way of finishing projects.   Maybe another unfinished project may come to the rescue here.  I had planned to explore  and documjent a host of free music applications here maybe I could add some free apps to my mac to replace the synths that will not load. I then need to start finishing muic projects and avoid the clutter an distraction.

Adventures in North Yorkshire

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I spent the day filming for the Cornfield Flowers Project with Chris Wilson. We started out at Silpho field and then spent some time in the very atmospheric Spaunton Quarry. Then Chris led the way to the secluded “mushroom field” Finally we returned to the Jeep having left the engine running as had been hesitant to start on the previous stopover point. This video covers the journey back to my own vehicle parked up on the main road.

Animex Fringe 2011

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If you can’t make it to the event in Saltburn today  (Thurs 3rd March) you should still me able to enjoy it online. I say “should” because this is experimental. At http://tvcm.co.uk/animex2011 there is a tweetstream with the hashtag #tvcmanim11 – a chat stream, a live stream and a “blogcast” releasing each film at the same time as the audience sees it.

Never Go Back

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I’ve mentioned to a few people my habit of knocking out a quick song and then forgetting it. Everyone says “run a tape recorder and capture them”. But that would destroy the art of it – a song created, performed and forgotten all in 10 minutes or however long it takes a video or some file to render. Well I knocked one out just now and ran a recorder. The singing is crap and it’s just 40 seconds long. However, the whole song is there in 40 secs, it’ll never be any longer. For those in the know nudge nudge, let’s call it my South Stanley song.

Production Resumed

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Production has begun again after the Christmas break on “Tommy and Barry Go Back”. We lost a lot of production days before Christmas to weather condition and ill health so we have postponed the world premiere to March 3rd. It’s the same venue, Saltburn Community Theatre at 7.30pm. We moved our production location to Destinations in Saltburn as a more convenient location. Yesterday we got some very tricky shots in the can including Zeppelin flying and Chilean rescue pod maneuvering!

Next production day is Friday 21st (Destinations Again) when we hope to finish the 1945 Jetty scene. Below are some stills from scene 6.



Smith and Bluster


Tommy and Barry in 1945





Distance Learning

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Projected onto the wall in Salturn from room in Prato

During the October 2010 workshops at Destinations in Saltburn  I explained to the participants that I would be out of the country at a conference the following week and so there would be no session. They said that they attend any way because it’s quite a social group. I therefore suggested it would be an opportunity to try out some thoughts I had been having about distance teaching and learning.  From my hotel room at the conference I began to put together a session. Once again I caught my self, adding too many complications and luckily realised this in time to strip back the proposed workshop to the very basics. The plan was to show participants how to add images to their WordPress blog.  In the end I just created a WordPress blog myself and went through the exercise and then made a link to it from www.myteesuni.com, which is always the starting point for the sessions.
First we had a couple of test sessions with the proprietor of the Destinations learning centre, Paul Davies. We decided not to use any of the Destinations computers but for the UK end we would use a MS Windows PC connected to a projector and screen. I ran a Mac and we hooked up using Skype. We wanted to use free software but there may be other alternatives we could try out later. For now Skype seemed to work well apart from dropping out occasionally.
On the day of the session only 3 people turned up which was disappointing but then we had said the session would not take place. The participants were positioned at computers and in clear view was a large projection of what I was transmitting from Italy via Skype. I wore a headset and mic but at the Saltburn end speakers were set up and the learners communicated with via the mic in the webcam. The mic in Destinations was turned down and my headphones were cranked up to compensate and we experienced very few feedback problems.
I spoke to the participants and then shared my screen with them and showed them my wordpress  (http://bit.ly/steve-wp ) and explained what we were going to do. The participants then logged on to their WordPress accounts with no problem, so the universal password approach was clearly proving it’s worth. I then showed the participants my dashboard and explained changes we needed to make to the preference settings in preparation for image uploading. One participant struggled a bit but another more ICT able participant was able to assist. Had I been present in the session I would have been able to do this but obviously for this distance approach we need to have people seated near to others that can assist if possible. Paul Davies also assisted which was fine for this test but in the long run it would not be an effective use of personnel and self-help within learners would be valuable. I was able to zoom into my screen so the settings being projected could be clearly seen. However whilst pointing to things with my curser this was not so clear but I have since found out how to increase the size of the curser considerably.
There were a couple of technical problems, which I was able to fix by logging into the individuals WordPress account thanks once again to the universal password. Apart for a few more Skype dropouts the session went well and we achieved our objectives. Using the traditional methods the session may have reached it’s objectives in around 30 minutes but this way too an hour. However once the session was over there was a buzz of enthusiasm from Saltburn that we had been able to achieve this across 2,000 miles!
Paul Davies wrote the following appraisal:

Setting up was easier than I thought, the testing we had done last couple of days helped and giving some thought to room / area layout was useful. Would have made even more of a difference if there has been more people, all would have seen you in glorious ‘projection’ mode!! I was worried about the numbers but perhaps for a first session few was more beneficial. Maybe a remote session needs more experienced users as part of it and a peer support element needs to be considered. That said I thought that the session proved both useful and successful as the folks get the results expected, albeit with some unforeseen assistance from yourself.

On that point, Skype worked well and as a tool for distance learning, while there are some limitations, I can see it as user friendly and flexible as say, a webinar setting.

I was concerned our room would be too noisy, not sure how it was at your end. I was also conscious of myself looking after other centre users and not just the remote session users. We could hold a ‘closed’ session or depending on people, use a different room. Either one may help in my not having to move to other areas. All in all though I enjoyed the experience as did the users, and certainly would like to investigate it more.

Re-enactment Of Historic Event

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On Thursday 18th November children at Whitcliffe Primary School will re-enact a famous event from their Schools history. Actually the story relates to Skinningrove school but both schools have been amalgamated and children of Skinningrove and Carlin How all attend Whitecliffe. Whitecliffe has the logbooks of both schools going back over 140 years and one entry states; “school evacuated on the occasion of a Zeppelin sighted overhead. The children will re-enact this momentous event and Inspector Charlie Bell of Cleveland Police will play the part of the calm voice of authority leading the children to shelter in the mines (this actually took place too – many Skinningrovers took shelter in the mines during both world wars.  This will form the audio track of an animated film  “Tommy and Barry Go Back” to be premiered at Saltburn Community Theatre, Animex Fringe on February 10th 2011.                                                                                         

Captain Kirk Flies The Zeppelin

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Straad Kirk has been cast in the role of the captain of the Zeppelin that will fly over Skinningrove School re-enacting an event that took place nearly 100 years ago. Unlike the actual Zeppelin of 1915 the one Kirk will be flying has a fully stocked bar. Clearly the cast will be frequenting this craft regularly. This is part of the filming of “Tommy and Barry Go Back” to be premmiered at Saltburn Community Theatre, Annimex Fringe on February 10th 2011.