CARIAD enjoyed the second of its scoping workshops in Swansea today. Dr. Cathy Treadaway ran the second OPAN funded research development workshop for the ‘Making a Difference’ research project which is exploring the development of playful artefacts for people with dementia. The workshop was held in Swansea at the very welcoming Tapestri building. We brought together care providers, managers, occupational therapists and academics and included a presentation by Dr. David Prytherch, from User Lab at Birmingham City University, on haptic perception and dementia. http://www.bcu.ac.uk/biad/research.
Topics arising after the talk included: the difficulties faced in working in care homes; the stretches and pressures on care home workers; community engagement; perception of dementia in society; fiddling and making for makings sake; the relationship between sensory experience and instinct; and the ways the brain processes and understands reactions to sensory stimulus, all very interesting indeed, take a look at a clip here (https://vimeo.com/71807694). We closed the session discussing some of the technological possibilities. Thanks to everybody for making it such an insightful and interesting discussion full of potential! Looking forward to seeing you all at our next session.
CARIAD had a wonderful morning at the Hollies School in Cardiff today http://www.theholliesschool.co.uk/welcome.html . Wendy and Leah filmed Glynis Thomas who discussed the ways some of the kids are interacting with Somantics and Reactickles as part of the impact studies for the Shape project in Birmingham http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/education/shape/index.aspx
Glynis was part of CARIAD’s founding project and was the very first school to participate in Wendy’s work so she will always have a special place within CARIAD. It’s so lovely to be able to go back nearly ten years later and to see how things have moved on and to listen to Glynis expertise and understandings of the children’s personalities.
The sessions were carried out in the same way as Anthony’s last week, and it seems the format is working. We are editing the videos together as we speak so watch this space for some amazing digital stories are coming your way!
‘A top Cardiff Met graduate and grandmother of two has secured full funding for further study’
CARIAD are very much looking forward to the opportunity to work with Beverley. Her research is set to contribute to some of CARIAD’s most established research projects into Autism. Beverley has already worked with Wendy and CARIAD is looking forward to continuing the relationship. Beverley is researching ASC couple relationship satisfaction, health and wellbeing, a very interesting and under researched area. Congratulations again Beverley!
CARIAD had a very informative meeting with Anthony and Janet at Trinity fields School today. We met to watch videos of the children interacting with Somantics http://somantics.org/. Anthony is already undertaking pioneering work founding the PLC in Gesture-Based Technology group which is already having a huge impact in Schools in Wales. Take a look! http://kinectsen.wikispaces.com/ http://opensen.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/kinectsen-plc-exploring-gesture-based-technologies/
http://www.trinityfieldsschoolandresourcecentre.co.uk/news/firstgesturebasedtechnologymeeting.htm
We showed some edited clips (the videos were also shot by the teachers) of the children exploring Somantics and asked the teachers to comment on what they saw. Key to the sessions was the teachers comfort to interpret the videos in their own time on their own terms without intervention or judgements. In this way the interpretations were able to flow without any pressure to provide ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ responses. The teacher’s perspectives, knowing each child’s personality and engagement profile provided essential contextual information of the ways the interactive apps are improving communication and well-being.
The sessions were also recorded on video (video link when ready) and this proved essential to capture the thick data sets which emerged and appear to be growing. This ranged from the entirely nuanced facial expressions of the teachers, happy to see the children engaging at such a high level, to explaining that a child saying ‘Orange’ in expectation of the next colour on the painting app, was the child’s first ever independent comment on the world. Other key factors were the children’s general behaviour and contentment at the times of filming which impacted upon understandings of their levels of engagement with the apps.
The sessions highlighted the levels and details of information contained in each small clip (which was no more than two minutes each) and the time necessary to spend deconstructing the data from filming the child, to editing and modes of analysis. This indicates that the videoing processes might facilitate some of the methods related to understanding young people with autism by slowing down and taking the time to understand with the children are telling us. CARIAD is looking forward to our next meeting on the 19th September 2013.
CARIAD’s research assistant Leah Mc Laughlin joined Prof. Jeffrey Jones http://cardiff-school-of-art-and-design.org/staff/jeffreyjones/ and presented at the digitizing and archiving seminar at Aberystwyth yesterday http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/art/. Representatives from Bath Spa, Cardiff Met and Aberystwyth School of Art met to discuss the wide range of challenges and debates surrounding the digitizing and cataloguing of traditional archives, but in particular new media like moving-images, online platforms and social networks. The event sparked many debates regarding the interpretation of moving-images in research, the death of celluloid film and the philosophy of re-enactment on film. CARIAD are looking forward to more future collaborations with Moira Vincentelli Director of the world renowned Ceramic Archive in Aberystwyth http://www.ceramics-aberystwyth.com/, in order to facilitate ways of appraising the archive and developing ways of cataloguing and interpreting visual data.
CARIAD today enjoyed the final showcase event run by CEWN (Creative Exchange Wales Network) at the Wales Millennium Centre where the i-Magine project disseminated the project’s outcomes thus far (see previous blogs). The entire spectrum of CEWN projects (starting, in progress and complete) were represented and given the opportunity to present their projects via posters, stands, banners and videos. The day was a mix of networking, reflecting and key note speakers from esteemed academics and partners within knowledge exchange and the creative industries. It was wonderful seeing the exciting range of outputs already achieved and to get some useful feedback for the future of i-Magine which includes a new collaboration with the BBC! Well done CEWN we look forward to the next stages of these exciting ventures into knowledge exchange!
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.
A final workshop, full of future possibilities, was held at the Wales Millennium Centre this afternoon where the iMAGINE team (Cathy, Prue, Karen and Richard) welcomed some new potential funders from Cardiff Met and Cardiff School of Medicine to carry the iMAGINE vision into the future. We were also delighted to welcome back the original seed funders from CWEN (Creative Wales Exchange Network). Prof. Hamish Fyff and Dr. Richard Bromley. A wide range of possible funding sources were revealed in order to develop the aspirations of iMAGINE. CARIAD facilitated in providing feedback to CWEN of the projects development thus far, and looks forward to continuing this interesting collaboration into its next phase with both the iMAGINE team and CWEN.
A very informative end of term Symposium took place at Cardiff School of Management yesterday looking at the various ways material feature in research practice http://www.wirad.ac.uk/research-themes/digit/. Co-organiser and presented Cathy (CARIAD member) presented the latest findings of her Walk and Draw project, which is exploring the ways places effect the creative process and can enable sensations of subjective well-being, or as we like to say, happiness.
The findings are being applied to facilitate understandings of immigrant communicates in inner city areas and the ways they do/not feel connected to their local environment. Other presentations ranged from the ways the camel is depicted on tapestries in Israel to CARIAD member Leah discussing ways of capturing making in ceramic contemporary practice. Needless to say CARIAD was delighted to participate and is looking forward to seeing the students inspired by the event for the next term.
CARIAD enjoyed the second of its scoping workshops in Swansea today. Dr. Cathy Treadaway ran the second OPAN funded research development workshop for the ‘Making a Difference’ research project which is exploring the development of playful artefacts for people with dementia. The workshop was held in Swansea at the very welcoming Tapestri building. We brought together care providers, managers, occupational therapists and academics and included a presentation by Dr. David Prytherch, from User Lab at Birmingham City University, on haptic perception and dementia. http://www.bcu.ac.uk/biad/research.
