S.I.D.

Margrove Park Village Hall have been successful in a funding bid to develop their "Digital Village" and will sustain the Village Hall Internet connection beyond the current project and provide them with their own bank of laptops. We're quite excited at the prospect of developing the Digital Village concept further and in the bid we spoke of creating a virtual Post Office, Corner Shop, School and Job Shop as the village has none of these things.

The saying goes that the best websites start with a piece of paper. This is just that the core team (below, minus one missing person) have been doing to design their new Digital Village website.

Virtual Post Office - All the things you can do online such as apply for a TV License, RE-tax your car. Taxing your car online for instance is far more efficient than going to a post office.

Virtual, Job Shop - job search online, pointers and advice, CV's etc - closely connected to ..............

Virtual School - The Digital Skills Network currently in development. Online support and learning on a range of subjects including how to run your virtual post office.

Virtual Corner Shop particularly useful to older residents, they club together to form a consortium to be able to place an order sufficiently large to warrant a Tescos/Iceland - whoever Groceries delivery

Virtual Volunteering A new idea. More details later.

Read the MyWeb2@Margrove Park report

Visit the Margrove Park website

A Merry Christmas from Tees Valley Community Media, the Destinations@Saltburn Social Inclusion Demonstrators Project, The Institute of Digital Innovation, Digital City and The University of Teesside.

A Story of Christmas Past In a digital archiving session at Marske Library, 94 year old former School Teacher told students from Bydales School about the diphtheria epidemic at Markse infants school: Christmas 1934. Click here to hear Vera's story and to view pictures from the archiving session.
Going To The Movies Christmas time is traditionally the time families go to the movies. Click here to view our latest movie and the story behind its making. We’re going big with this concept in the New Year so you can expect to see more movies produced by a whole host of community groups.
A Christmas Gift Margrove Park could not have wished for a better Christmas gift. They have just been awarded a Tees Valley delegated grant and funding from ERDF with thanks to Tees Valley Joint Strategy Unit. The funding will help to develop their digital village and to involve the whole community. Click here to read more about their exciting plans for the future. Pictured left to right, Steve Thompson, Community Media Coordinator(Santa), Margaret - Marian - Jean, Margrove Park Village Hall Asociation, Paul Davies of Destinations @ Saltburn (Social Inclusion Demonstrators project manager)
Santa Goes to Saltburn Santa and his helpers visited Destinations @ Saltburn once again for fun, mince pies and enrollment into the UCPD courses. This year the highlight was the screening of the Straad Players movie (above) and a visit to the second life backlot. Ho Ho Ho. Visit the Destinations website.
Unsilent Night For a fourth year New York composer, Phil Kline brought his “Unsilent Night” to Middlesbrough. Scores of people marched through the streets playing Phils music on massed ghetto blasters bring Christmas cheer to the streets of the town. Click here to see pictures and video.
Happy New Year It's customary at this time of year whilst looking forward to the new year to reflect on the year gone by. Lets look at some of the highlights for TVCM in the past year. Again three major webcast events were mounted The Middlesbrough Mela, Stockton Riverside Festival and Saltburn Folk Festival. Some great animations were produced like these two from Redcar & Cleveland Mind and The Princes Trust not to mention all of these from Bedale Primary. And we have lots to look forward to for 2008. Apart from developing some of the things mentioned above we have the development of the Digital Skills Network and a major community digital arts event for March 2008 Happy New Year from everyone associated with Tees Valley Community Media.

The first in a series of Community Media workshops took place today with students of Bydales School (below)

The students were learning to scan images and archive techniques in preparation for a project to be run at Marske library to build an achive of images which the local community will bring in for scanning.

The students practiced with a couple of archive images and then created some up to date images by scanning the contents of their pockets. These can be seen here

The Marske Digital Village is a partnership project: Bydales Specialist Technology College, Marske Library, Tees Valley Community Media, Destinations @ Salburn - Social Inclusion Demonstrators.

Gallery (all images approved)

3 Animations produced at Ormesby School in the Friday "Enrichment" classes.

or click here

or click here

or click here

Students of Ormesby Comprehensive are working on a multi media exhibition to be launched in March 2008. The exhibition which will feature voices, music images and animation will run in the University of Teesside's OCTORAMA. The students will run a workshop at the BBC's Open Centre in MIddlesbrough on November 22nd to pitch their ideas to invited guests to encourage other schools and communities to contribute to the exhibition. The theme for the exhibition will be "Dreams" (wishes, hopes, aspirations) and the children hope their parents will visit the school to record their own voices to add to the soundscape.

The Octorama is a fourteen metre diameter art installation with eight large screens and eight independent sound sources running audio visual content (images, video, ambient soundscapes, voices, poems) and affords the visitor a totally immersive experience. The first outing of the Octorama was at the People And Place event in Eston, February 2003. Click here to see a video from that event.

(click to enlarge) Students study the model of the Octorama "how are we gonna build a 14 metre version of this guys?"	(click to enlarge) students work on their ideas for the exhibition.

The group started out at Laburnam Road Library but we quickly decided to move elsewhere. We could not access the Community Walk map application - don't know if it was blocked or if the Library's connection was too slow. Anyway we headed to Destinations @ Saltburn where we continued the workshop. We entered 3 graves from the directory into the satelite view. Clicking on these hotspots brings up the info and clicking on the title takes you to the place on the FORCEM website where the information is. We're planning a presentation at the BBC on December 3rd where the group can present their work to invited guests. To view the Digital Cemetery CLICK HERE.

The first session took place today with FORCEM at Laburnam Rd Library. I discussed web 2 with the guys and talked about forcem.co.uk emails and google docs but it was going over their heads. Their focus was clearly the Cemetary and their website so we got right down to it. They created a home page, a news item and two grave records. Two down only 14000 to go! That's right there are many more recorded graves than there are headstones. Some of it comes into data protection territory but clearly the visible headstones are public and can be recorded on the website without too much fuss. The rest can come later. When I explained to them about global positioning and media scapes to chart the cemetery and they got very excited about that.

View the website here.

Low numbers again for the MyWeb2 workshop. This week we:-

Created a spreadsheet for the Village Halls finances.
Looked at some YouTube videos.
Added a story to the website showing how all the houses narrowly escaped demolition.
Shot some video fottage using a small hand held video camera that gave people the idea of a Margove Park "walkthrough" video.
One new @margrovepark.com email was created to go through the process of new account creation.

All the tasks were recorded as a "screencast" so that participants could refer back to the processes they had learned. These videos are quite large and we are still wondering how best to use them. Too large to get many on a USB stick. Maybe we need to compress and add to the website.

A couple of people expressed and interest in being able to electronically fill in forms that can at present only be filled in on paper. We'll look at a simple piece of free software to do this.

These young people came to Destinations this week to begin work on their web presence and to begin to tell their story. We're expecting more people when they return last week when we hope to find a "groovier" name for their blog and a suitable domain name.

Click here to see the work so far.

These guys are part of the Young Carers Project at Eastern Ravens Trust (Stockton), which offers respite and support to Young Carers. Young carers are children and young people who look after another family member due to ill health and/or disabilities. The Young Carers Project at Eastern Ravens Trust enables Young Carers aged 8-17 to take a break from their caring roles and responsibilities, and provides opportunities to meet and make friends with other Young Carers experiencing similar situations; the project also provides activities which Young Carers may not get the opportunity to take part in because of their caring roles.

With the Destinations UK Online centre the hub of ticket sales and information about the internationally renowned Saltburn Folk Festival, the ICT suite was used to continue the musical theme.

Visitors from accross the country surfed the internet to find out more about the bands performing and what esle they could do in Saltburn and the area.

Groups took advantage of the
digital music workshops that were held over the weekend, learning how to record and edit music online and how to find and download Free software that could he;p them.

With some impromtu playing and singing, the centre began to resemble our own little Abbey Road!!

The first MyWeb2 session (web2 for older people) took place in margrove park this week. I know I said there was no plan but the session didn't even go as NOT planned. Small numbers again but at least different people. The're still dead keen to add stories to their website.

I had been downloading a widget to resize images and they jumped on the idea of "what's this downloading malarkey".

so they went thought the process of

1) downloading a Microsoft powertoy
2) Downloading Picasa
3) Installing both

[name] flapped about her lack of success with image downloading/uploading and we discussed htat the proper terminology had to be "transfer" (from camera to PC) I showed her how to treat the camera as an external drive and forget about the camera software thus taking charge of your own devices.

the END product is this:

http://www.tvcm.co.uk/ecol/index.php/mp_com/2007/08/09/high_veiw

A new series of workshops and delivery sessions began at Margrove Park after the community centres Internet connection was finalised with help from the UK Online SID project.

With help from the team from the University and Destinations, residents got straight into developing an on line identity for the village, downloading the software needed, installing it and working on images of the village to upload to a village webpage.

There will be a further 5 sessions looking at ICT issues that the residents have requested. With First Time Online being made available for those needing to develop or start their ICT journey, others in the groups can concentrate on other areas such as digital photography or web site design and maintenance.

Below are the comments received on YouTube for Redcar & Cleveland Mind's animation Diversity Dave. You can see the animation here.

johngrong6859 (2 days ago)
this is mint

Deano12387 (2 days ago)
i think this is the best annmation in the world, it also has an upbeat message behind the colourful animation, how wonderful. I just wish my ginger son had seen it before he committed suicide. We shpuld all spread the message. ITS COOL TO BE DIFFERENT,even ginger

johngrong6859 (2 days ago)
you are soo right, we are lucky to have characters who can relate to the younger generation. we could all learn a lesson from diversity dave. this video should be shown to all gingers, disabled people and other different people

Deano12387 (2 days ago)
my son was often called a square at school i wonder if he could have learned from diversity dave, just like the yellow square in the film did.

The soundproof nature of the new Radio Studio in the Diamond Street base of Redcar and Cleveland Mind was tested today when gales of laughter issued from the room where training was being conducted. The first audio piece is online and can be found here

Watch that space as training continues and big plans are afoot for future broadcasts.

Had a wonderful time working with pupils from Bedale Primary. The children do the school great credit. Over 40 children worked in three sessions to produce the animations you can see below. Apart from the actual animating the children learned so much about teamwork, problem solving and negotiation. Plus they gave me two bottles of red wine!

Mr Bean Goes To The Opera

The Blob & The Knight

One Sunny Day

Don't Drink And Drive

Fire Fighters

Road Safety

Show Off's

The Three Wolves and the Big Bad Pig

What a fantastic day was had at the Middlesbrough Mela on Sunday 14th July.

Thanks to Teesside University, Destinations UK Online Centre and the SID project had a fabulous space on the Bandstand and were able to promote digital and social inclusion at this prestigious event. With images and video being uploaded live at the event people could see first hand the power of ICT and how it can bring people together. With people checking local websites of the Mela as well as Direct.Gov for local information it was a very active day. Even the weather forecast was being checked online!

Click here for behind the scenes pics

click here for all pics

A great crowd turned up to meet the participants and find out more about activities that the centre is engaged in.

The film was made with the help of Destinations @ Saltburn UK Online centre and the University of Teesside as part of the Ufi funded Social Inclusion Demonstrators project. Using ICT the group demonstrated how a very powerful social message can be brought to many using digital means. It can be viewed via this blogg below.

This project was started in Adult Learners' Week - May 2007 to explore Media Literacy.

The excercise was based on three 'Internet radio' workshops run in collaboration with Hope Foundation in Middlesbrough, residents of the village of Margrove Park and Destinations UK online centre in Saltburn.

The whole project is a collaboration between NIACE and University of Teesside Department of Academic Enterprise (Community Media).

More details of the project can be found here and Internet Radio projects can be found here

After the Christmas hols the Community Media Club starts up again at Destinations Saltburn. The main order of business will be to work on some animations for the Animex Festival Animex is the annual International animation festival which takes place at the University of Teesside in Middlesbrough. This year part of the festival is taking place just across the road at Saltburn Community Theatre an it's here that many community produced animations will be shown. Read more about the CM club HERE

(Click Image to enlarge) The peace was shattered in Saltburn this week when the Princess Trust Redcar 9 Team decended on Destinations to work with Community Media Coordinator, Steve Thompson on their blog. The blog, www.redcar9.co.uk will chart their progress on the 12 week course with Cheryl Bearpark and Karen Duncan from the Princess Trust serenely observing. There are stories and pictures in the blog allready so bookmark it to follow the story. If you're wondering about the different coloured and sized text this is because the team wanted to learn HTML right away!

http://www.princes-trust.org.uk/
http://www.clevelandfire.gov.uk/

Click on image to enlarge.

Ruth and Margaret from Skinningrove Link Up UK Online Centre pick up thier first set of course books for the accredited UCPD in ICT. Ruth and Margaret both aim to develop the skills they have learnt so far at their own UK Online Centre and at Destinations as part of the SID project and hope they can pass these on to more people in Skinningrove. They particulary would like to be able to encourage the younger people of the village to come in and use the computers and to pass on to them the computer skills they now have.

A Report by: Karen Duncan

Click here for more pics. Click on image below to enlarge -

On Wednesday 18th April at 2pm 11 students from Cleveland Fire Brigades Prince

People from several community groups met at Destinations Saltburn to discuss plans and ideas for the future. All had been engaged in the past year in one of two projects: "East Cleveland Community ICT" or "Digital Discovery Route" both of which were facilitated by the University of Teesside's Digital City. The group were meeting to take community ownership of the East Cleveland Laptops. Through a new project "Social Inclusion Demonstrators" several of the communities are getting Internet connections and wireless networks to make use of those laptops. The Teesside S.I.D. is one of just 20 such projects in the country ( info here ) and is funded by the University for Industry (UFI). The Teesside S.I.D. project or "Digital Village" features several "spokes" with Destinations UK online centre under new ownership/management of Paul Davies as the "hub".

The group met in the first floor of Destinations a former toy shop "Kings of Saltburn" which has a history of being bombed in the 1st World War. It was agreed that Steve Thompson (Community Media Coordinator) would chair the groups meetings and he outlined details of the progress made through the East Cleveland projects and how they fitted into new and future plans. Sue Anderson and Paul outlined plans for this space to compliment the learning centre and open access Internet Cafe below. the group were invited to input ideas into the plans for this space and several great ideas were forthcoming. In fact ideas were in no short supply throughout the meeting in general and all the participants expressed that their experiences of the two East Cleveland projects had left them thirsting for more. We can expect to see more animation and blogging more digital media and there was a great deal of interest in creating an Internet radio network. The group will continue to collaborate through electronic communication and further meetings. It was proposed that the meetings should move around the communities and the next one is planned to take place in Skinningrove.

Today the "digital tour" moved to South Bank and Dormanstown libraries (see below). In these 3 visits I've met with staff from every branch of Redcar & Cleveland Liraries. Not sure what they'd want to see I gave them the lot - The full digital monty! - First Time Online Package, Web Two Stuff, Internet Radio, Digital Music, Digital Story Telling, The Community Challenge Online Quiz, Blogging and Animation. Many of them had to be helped from the building.

For details of what the Librarians saw click on the "read more" link after the images below

Early Morning Start At South Bank

The Tour Bus Arrives and Unloads

Stunned Librarians on Their Day Off

Read more! »

Today I ran a "Digital Awareness Workshop" for staff of Redcar and Cleveland Libraries at Loftus Library. When I arrived I realised it would be a tall order as it was a beautifully sunny day (click on image right to enlage - this is Loftus Town Hall which stands opposite Loftus Library) Yes; it was a beautifully sunny day and several library staff had arrived for this workshop on their day off! Anway, I need not have worried, they were very attentive, interested and full of ideas. I think we can expect to see some interesting things coming from this workshop. Tomorrow there are two more at Digital Awareness Workshops. Dormanstown Library and South Bank Library.

Below you can see two great new animations. The first is "Diversity Dave" made by participants of Redcar and Cleveland Mind at Skelton Civic Hall and the second is "Mr and Mrs Careless" made the Prince's Trust Recdar Team 8 at Redcar Fire Station. You can see all Prince's Trust 8 postings here and Readcar & Cleveland Mind @Sklelton here. Both groups have a launch planned for their animations which will be reported on in this blog.

Diversity Dave by Redcar & Cleveland Mind @ Skelton

Mr & Mrs Careless by The Prince's Trust Redcar 8

For further information on Fire Safety CLICK HERE

Another highly successful open day at Destinations, Saltburn. Lots of visitors came and looked around with many signing up to UCPD courses. With the proximity of Easter many chicks and bunnies were in evidence. Click here for more pics We're sorry for giving the window shopping gentleman a scare in Saltburn that day but we can only imagine the conversation when, having caught up with his wife he tried to blame his tardiness on a brush with a big white rabbit.

Many visitors had a go at stop frame animation using their own bodies as the object of animation. You can see the resulting movie below.

Click on image to enlarge. Animators at Freebrough Engineering College are hard at work on week two of a series of animation workshops with the University of Teesside's Community Media Coordinator. Click here to see more images from the session.

[click on image to enlarge] Today was the final session of the Redcar and Cleveland Mind @ Skelton Civic Centre animation workshops. Several voice characterisation stars were discovered and the film is sure to be a hit when it premiere

Graham performs the music track for the groups animation "Diversity Dave". (Click Image To Enlarge)

Over the past few weeks the group have been working at Skelton Civic Centre to create their masterpiece which you will be able to see soon on this site. To whet your appetite Click here for behind the scenes action

Pupils from the Sacred Heart School in Redcar are working with various schools and departments of the University of Teesside on a new project called the Forensic Challenge. The idea builds on the "Community Challenge" which began life as an online pub quiz. In the first ever online pubquiz Timms Coffee House in Skinningrove beat the Black Bull in Trimdon who were sporting Prime Minister Tony Blair as a member of their team. Archives of the Community Challenge here.

Later using software developed by Dave Eagle of the Univerity of Teesside's School of Computing and working in partnership with BECTA (British Educational Communications Technologies Agency) various other challenges took place. These included a Euro-Challenge and a 52 team "Challenge the Nation" right across the UK.

Now the Sacred Heart pupils are bringing this right up to date by making the content of an online quiz a Crime Scene Investigation. The components of this challenge will include, images, video footage, interrogations and geographial information through satelite images and googlemaps.

A wonderful day was spent at Skelton Village Hall producing four animations in a day long animation workshop. Four teams worked to produce 4 different animations which are collectively known as "Aliens on the Beach". You can view the finished production by Clicking Here

You can view pictures from the day by clicking here

The Princes Trust at Redcar Fire Station are producing an animation on a "fire safety" theme. To the right is a still from one of the scenes showing a picture of domestic bliss. All this is about to change with devastating consequences.

After school animation club taking place over 3 Tuesdays. Four teams are producing animations. The shot to the right is the spot where the workshops are taking place and not from the actual animation.

With help from S.I.D. funding the community of Skinningrove have been given control over their own ICT destiny. Their Internet connection has been improved and they have been trained up to be able to enter new users onto the Skinningrove UK online server. The next Skinningrove News (online ) will be released shortly and we can expect an event soon to relaunch this wonderful facility to the whole of the community.

The team at Redcar Fire Station talk about their sets and their production plans.

At the invitation of Redcar & Cleveland Mind we're working with this group in Skelton Town Hall. Together we'll create two animations on the theme of "diversity" for an event in May. The group are working on storylines and characters.

Chandni Ladies Group get together at the International Centre in Middlesbrough to cook, learn different things, chat, gossip, go on outings, do basketball and healthy cooking.

Overthe next 12 weeks they will document their activities with a web picture diary which can be found Here They are getting to know how to use the camera and the internet and are using a free tool called Picassa to store images.

With all the many different Digital Media activities on offer everyone seems to be going for animation. Therefore another trip to Toys R Us was needed to stock up (right)

I've just had an earbashing off the missus for warming the old stuff in the oven and rolling it out on the kitchen worktop to reconstitute it. Clearly at the end of a session unless the models are to be kept we need to ask participants to break them down into separate colours so we can re-use the materials.

At the invitation of Redcar & Cleveland Mind a workshop/presentation took place this evening at the Grenfell Club. The group plan to create an animation possibly with a quite serious theme. Watch this space!

The editorial team meet at their digital headquaters in Loftus Library to upload the third Town Crier to go online. After 18 years of the print publication the Town Crier went digital in August 2006 with issue 104. Now the team are meeting to learn how to use the new software to upload the LTC and to discuss ways of developing further the "digital arm" of their operation.

A presentation and workshop at the Princes Trust base in Redcar Fire Service depot. A premable to various activities to follow. Durning the session a piece of multi media was produced Click here for PORK SCRATCHINGS

Pictured right Paul Waugh learning to blog. We can expect some cliff hanging (pardon the pun) stories from Paul and his colleagues so keep your eyes on the COASTGUARD BLOG (link)

Tommy Evans and Barry Hunt have been invited by the Environment Agency to tell the Skinningrove story in Cumbria. Pictured right working on their powerpoint presentation, Tommy and Barry will tell a story of community spirit combined with all the extra resources Skinningrove could muster. These include external agencies and organisations as well as utilising ICT to help fight back from the devastating flooding.

The presentation includes the Skinningrove film "Fire and Water", Tommy and Barry on Skinningroves Internet Radio station and the infamous Tommy's Plight" animation.

Links

Skinningrove Website
Fire and Water
Tommys Plight
The Powerpoint (to be added)

The community turned out en masse for the multi media presentation and enrollment today. Many expressed interest in digital images, animation, web 2 workshop and they ALL signed up for First Time Online which starts in two weeks time on Mondays and Tuesdays. Contact Ted McNicholls Tel: 01287 678024.

During the presentation everyone took a turn at recording their voices into open source audio software "Audacity". There was a moment of surprise and amusement when the entire front two rows turned out to be related to each other !

"Show business people making movies of themselves" ... goes the old Steely Dan song and this lot are no exception. Firstly they made plasticene models of themselves and then gave themselves starring roles in an animation for the Animex International Animation Festival. Click on "read more" to see a movie of the making of the Community Media Club Animation. Click Here to see the animation.

Read more! »

Projects are listed in alphabetical order.

Aberfeldy Neighbourhood Centre (London)
Age Concern Leeds (Yorkshire & Humber)
Age Concern Newcastle (North East)
The Association of Bristol Community Learning Centres led by CSV Avon (South West)
Britannia Centre (The Lighthouse Project) (West Midlands)
Cambridgeshire Libraries led by March Library and Learning Centre (East)
Destinations@Saltburn (North East)
Everton Development Trust (North West)
Friends Centre Brighton (South East)
Harold Tomlins Centre (North West)
Hendon 2000 (North East)
Inverteign Family Learning Centre (South West)
Ipswich County Library (East)
Kenwick Hill UK online centre (East Midlands)
Leeds Central Library and Leeds Library and Information Service (Yorkshire & Humber)
Newcastle Clubhouse (North East)
Probe (Hull) (Yorkshire & Humberside)
Selby Learning Zone (London)
Windhill Community Association (Yorkshire & Humberside)
Windmill Hill City Farm (South West)

Click here for PDF

Click here for PDF

Click here for Grenfell website.

Click here for PDF
This group are doing a number of events in March around diversity, and this workshop is included. The group will come up with a story board around this theme.

Click here for PDF