music | CARIAD

Noah’s Ark at artsdepot

Posted on May 13, 2015 by Wendy

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We had a great time co-designing interactive artworks with young people from the Noah’s Ark children’s hospice at artsdepot. Using the fabulously accessible Touch Boardfrom Bare Conductive. The participants collaborated in teams to bring their favourite things to life by adding their own sounds to drawings. The culmination of the workshop was a set of paper-prototype “happiness machines” that included tickling, laughter, jokes, music and other references to the things in life that make us happy.

Final workshops underway for ProFoundCoding

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Wendy

Thanks to AnalysisPro and teachers Andrew Walker and Rachel Woodhouse for working with us over the past few months to develop our latest video tagging templates. The project won additional funding from CEWN to create new templates based around concepts of engagement to tag video sessions of children with profound and complex learning and communication difficulties. We will be releasing the template shortly along with instructions on ways to use and interpret the template for teachers in special schools. We will be adding the latest templates and information to our resource and website, ProFoundCoding which we released over the summer.

We spoke about the project at a recent CEWN special showcase event at the University of South Wales, Trefforest where we pitched the next stages to create new employment opportunities in special schools for Performance Analysis. Watch this space 🙂

CARIAD attends Creative Minds Conference

Posted on October 14, 2014 by Wendy

CARIAD’s Leah and Wendy were delighted to attend the Creative Minds conference in @Bristol today. The day was packed with thought provoking and challenging talks, interactive activities and sharing of new ideas relating to arts and disability. The event showcased the work of leading arts organisations, educators, businesses and charities, specialising in working with people with learning difficulties. These included Disability Arts Cymru, Outside In, Carousel, OpenStoryTellers, Magpie, DanceVoice, Turning Tides and many many more check out the Creative Minds website for full listings, www.creativemindsproject.org.uk.

There was lots of debate, including issues of quality in the arts working with people with learning difficulties, and balancing corporate sponsorship and expectations with pure creativity in art making. The day also showcased the work of local artists with disabilities, new research and funding opportunities. CARIAD discussed many of their latest projects and discussed many new collaborations and potential projects! Thanks for the invite Creative Minds – cant wait to see the films and outcomes from the day and looking forward to working with you in future!

CARIAD works with Connected Studio at the Millennium Centre

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Wendy

CARIAD has a fantastic day at the Millennium Centre today facilitating Connected Studio developing ways of making classical music more accessible to audiences through digital content and platforms. We also learned about new technologies and ideas to further establish links between academia and the media. We were reunited with Peter from PDR, Emily from School of Education and Katherine from CSAD.

We had an eventful day designing our new ‘Classy App’, a prototype to condense and consolidate some of the content on BBC 3 Radio, to renew and reinvigorate an audience with an interest in classical music but perhaps a bit shy about taking those initial first steps into the genre. Thank you Connected Studio, BBC, Hannah, CEWN and everybody else organising such a successful dynamic day, lots of possibilities!

CARIAD attends second Connected Studio Event

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Wendy

CARIAD’s Leah attended a very informative follow up meeting to the first Connected Studio day held in Wales in November which developed ideas to engage audiences with classical music in the BBC. http://cariadblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/29/connected-studios-linking-academics-and-media/ While this was a much quieter affair compared to the frantic day of knowledge exchange in November it was certainly an exciting and insightful afternoon.

We got to meet and greet a second round of researchers, academics and creative people from across Wales and discuss some of the potentials going forward to the build day in February. The BBC as always were very excited to hear about our ideas and background as we were equally privileged to be working with such a dynamic group of researchers and the expertise of the BBC. Looking forward to our first build day on this pioneering pilot project with endless potentials for CARIAD!

Connected Studios: linking academics and media

Posted on November 29, 2013 by Wendy

CARIAD were delighted to partake in a very interesting workshop and debate to re/engage the public with classical music through digital platforms. The event was run as a part of the larger CEWN project series, where CARIAD has several on-going collaborations and partnerships http://cewn.weebly.com/. The day also identified some synergies with CARIAD and S4C and BBC Wales.

We are looking forward to seeing how the projects develop especially since so many important issues were raised. Questions asked included ‘what is classical music’, ‘why is it called classical’. The elitist attitude and the accessibility of classical music for all demographics was also on the agenda, certainly some meaty food for thought. Thanks to all involved for hosting such an interdisciplinary day and facilitating in bridging gaps between academia and the media. Take a look her for details of the pilot projects https://www.mediaacademywales.org/partners-pilot-the-first-connected-studio-for-higher-education

CARIAD has its official launch at the Senedd supported by Leanne Wood AM and Eluned Parrott AM

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Wendy

CARIAD had our biggest event to date on Thursday, our official launch at the iconic Senedd building in Cardiff bay. We were honoured to have the support of three assembly members. Leanne Wood AM officially launched the centre and offered wonderful words of support and encouragement for the team. Eluned Parrott AM was our official sponsor and made the day possible. She presented some insightful thoughts and offered her congratulations to the successes of CARIAD thus far. We are looking forward to welcoming Eluned Parrott AM at some of our workshops in the near future! Jenny Rathbone AM also attended the day in full support of all of our research projects. We were also thrilled to have the wonderful Glynis from the Hollies School and Anthony from Trinity Fields on the podium to represent our stakeholders and say a few words about their experiences working with CARIAD. John Killick from Dementia Positive closed the session with a touching poem and invited everybody to come and have fun at his workshop later.

In true CARIAD style the day was much much more than a launch, we also hosted two separate workshops and demonstrated some of our capturing and video coding technologies working with AnalysisPro LTD http://www.analysispro.net/ and the Centre for Performance Analysis http://www3.cardiffmet.ac.uk/english/sport/about/staff/academic/pa/pages/home.aspx

Wendy’s Paper Prototyping workshop used paper to rapid prototype interactive and non-verbal communicative devices. The morning invited our PLC (professional learning community) group in Gesture-Based Technologies http://kinectsen.wikispaces.com/ and many new stakeholders to come up with a technology, using only paper, which might facilitate communication. These were presented back to the group and a vote was taken on which technology to develop further. The ‘rhythm detector’ won in the end and our invited coding and technology experts from our partner’s at CARIAD Interactive http://cariadinteractive.com/ created a code and working prototype which we were all playing on by the end of the session, not bad for a day’s work!

Our second workshop was last of Cathy’s OPAN funded sessions, we invited John Killick from Dementia Positive to come and run one of his infamous ‘invitation to have fun’ events, and fun it was. We made human statues, described objects through touch and even had a puppet show! While the sound of laughter was echoing from the building throughout the day the message was poignant: Dementia is not something to be frightened of or to shy away from. We need to find ways to engage with it and adopt a more positive and responsive attitude towards investigating and understanding some of the underlying features of the condition and ‘we must not be afraid to laugh’! You can read more about the day’s events and see more pictures here on Cardiff Met’s main page: http://www3.cardiffmet.ac.uk/English/News/Pages/CardiffMetlaunchesinteractiveandinclusiveartsresearchfacility.aspx
Our latest edition to the team Steve Coleman PhD student (read about him here http://cariadblog.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/cariad-awarded-ria-research-innovation-award-to-support-new-phd-student-steve-coleman-investigating-the-benefits-of-creative-play-for-people-with-dementia/ ) also made this fantastic video documenting the day’s events, take a look https://vimeo.com/75386114 thanks Steve!

CARIAD really has so many people to thank for the successes of the day and rather than thank a few here publicly we would rather thank EVERYBODY privately. Here’s looking forward to making this an annual event, thanks to all involved

Gesture Based Technology PLC -learning group Heronsbridge School Bridgend

Posted on June 21, 2013 by Wendy

Heronsbridge School http://moodle.bridgend.gov.uk/heronsbridge/ gave CARIAD and the Gesture Based Technology group http://kinectsen.wikispaces.com/ the warmest reception on this rainy June day. It is so humbling getting to meet and collaborate with such esteemed and enthusiastic partners. CARIAD were treated to some video based evidence gathered from the schools of the children interacting with some of CARIAD’s apps. The images and the stories from teachers warm the heart and are establishing a broad spectrum of evidence gathering techniques, interpretations of images and, it seems, laying new ground in the fields of video as an evidence based medium, amazing! Barry our collaborator from Muse (Multimedia Used in Special Education) then introduced his new sound apps, see our previous blog http://cariadblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/workshop-with-cariad-and-barry-farrimond-of-muse/. Barry’s music philosophy encourages silence as much as sound making, he argues that the sound of our own voice is a powerful conduit for engagement and empowerment (link to vimeo video). The team were really inspired by the results thus far and we are looking forward to the apps release in October. Our Next session will be in Cardiff on the 19th of September where CARIAD will be hosting a range of paper prototyping workshops to facilitate the designs of some new apps.

Workshop with CARIAD and Barry Farrimond of MUSE

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Wendy

Discussing the ways sounds of intent can be used as a coding template

A thoroughly informative workshop took place at the Centre for Performance analysis today, where CARIAD members Darrell Cobner, Dr. Wendy Keay-Bright and Leah Mc Laughlin met with Barry Farrimond of MUSE (Multimedia Used in Special Education) http://www.museproject.co.uk/meet-the-team/ to work on video coding for the Listening Aloud project http://www.museproject.co.uk/portfolio/listening-aloud/, one of our collaborative projects.

The session followed on from our first scoping event in March, where the principles of video analysis were discussed. Potential approaches for the interpretation of video data were highlighted, using well-established performance analysis design strategies and incorporating themes from the Sounds of Intent framework http://soundsofintent.org/soi.html. Moving on from this, today’s session resulted in a series of coding templates, starting with Sounds of Intent, which can be used to analyse video footage of the Listening Aloud prototypes in use. The aim of analysis at this stage is to highlight the ways in which the Listening Aloud interactive technologies can facilitate child led engagement with musical activities. A broader aim will be to consider the impact of this experience in relation to holistic objectives for individual children – for example gross motor movement and expressive communication. With further input from staff at the participating schools, the next phase of the project will refine these methods and templates to include established diagnostic tools and profiles in special needs education.