Breaking Bread Christmas Special a success!

DSC00790A special festive thank you to all our participants who attended our Breaking Bread Christmas Special at Chapter Arts House this Friday. The team hosted their second official workshop and in partnership with the Trinity Project, Splott, Cathays Community Centre and the Dalton Street Centre. We were part funded by the Tesco Charity Trust which enabled us to host a truly special workshop. Focusing on the mobility of the service we set up in a ‘white space’ with an oven hired from M&M Catering Wales. The recipe was a simple cinnamon loaf divided into mini tins for sharing. We also provided icing materials to let the group add festival decorations.

DSC00808The workshop focused on testing what was possible with very limited facilities, cooking times with a hire oven, health and safety, practical issues, as well as continuing to establish key links with Community Services and key protagonists across South Wales. The degree of ‘sharing’ provided by the workshop and the possibilites to connect with people in creative and exciting ways was also monitored.

A massive thank you to everybody who helped make the event possible, Happy Christmas from the team and looking forward to seeing everybody in the new year for more events and workshops.

CARIAD presents at CEWN showcase event in Trefforest

664801_origThanks to the Creative Exchange Wales Network for hosting their latest showcase event, experts from industry, Welsh Government and the BBC attended to give advice and support recent projects.

Leah presented on several of her projects which have received CEWN support, including iMagine, Breaking Bread and ProFoundCoding. She spoke of scaling up plans for Breaking Bread and the video tagging project in progress, aiming to improve teachers understanding of children with profound and complex learning and communication difficulties. More details about the event can be viewed here.

 

 

Daniel Marshall wins prestigious Elektra Award

Congratulations to recent Cardiff Met graduate Daniel Marshall for winning the rising star award at the prestigious Elektra Awards in London last week.

20140812_154858Daniel worked with CARIAD on his award winning Empathy project – designing for children with autism. The full project can be seen on his website.

Daniel impressed the panel with his enthusiasm, originality and overall commitment to designing for real
people and real world problems! Well done Daniel and best of luck for the future, we hope to work with you again!

Final workshops underway for ProFoundCoding

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 🙂

 

New Somability Film released

We are delighted to release our new Somability film, documenting the design and development of Somability from 2013 -2014. Thank you Dan from Dan films, an amazing Job! Thank you also to Cardiff Met for funding the film production.

Watch it here: https://vimeo.com/109148854

CARIAD invites everybody to SHOWCASE OF SOMABILITY AND RECENT CARIAD PROJECTS at the WMC on the 11th of November

 

Somability APPS graphic (2)-3This celebratory event will showcase Somability, an accessible software application, created by designers from Cardiff Metropolitan University and Cariad Interactive in partnership with Rhondda Cynon Taf Skills for Independence day care service and Artis Community. The project uses game technologies to capture movement and generate beautiful, graphic imagery. A compelling preview of Somability will be performed by adults with profound and multiple disabilities and their support workers on the Glanfa Stage. This will be followed by an explanation of the project, panel discussion and an opportunity for the audience to join in and explore the software. There will opportunity to see other recent work being undertaken at CARIAD, to meet participants, researchers, organisations, charities and businesses improving people’s lives through the arts.

For more information on Somability and other CARIAD projects see:

www.cariadinteractive.com/somability/ and www.cardiffmet.ac.uk/cariad

CELEBRATION SHOWCASING SOMABILITY AND RECENT CARIAD PROJECTS

WALES MILLENNIUM CENTRE GLANFA STAGE

11th of November 2014, 13:00 15:00

Order of event:

  • 13:00 Introduction, led by Wendy Keay-Bright, with input Rhondda Cynon Taf Skills for Independence
  • 13.20 Short Sharing of Somability with Artis Community
  • 13:40 Introduction to CARIAD centre and CARIAD student projects
  • 13.50 Panel discussion
  • 14:00 Open (mic) free expression with Touch Trust for peers, families, friends and visitors to try Somability
  • 14:20 Short Plenary discussion with RCT, Cariad, Artis Community and Touch Trust
  • 14:30 Networking and chance to view other CARIAD projects

 

The event will be open to the public and in a public space.

Please send all enquires and RSVP to lmclaughlin@cardiffmet.ac.uk

 

CARIAD attends Creative Minds Conference

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!

New CEWN funding success

20140430113038.m2ts.Still001Delighted to announce that Leah has been successful in her latest funding bid to work with special need teachers from Exeter House School and AnalysisPro! ProEngagementCoding will be developing new work and templates from our first collaboration with the project ProFoundCoding. The group will be seeking to extend their reach by designing a series of templates and to begin evaluations of the templates in action, a call for some volunteers will be going out soon!

 

Leah attends NESTA’s People Helping People

IMG_3608Leah had a hugely informative day attending NESTSA’s latest event, ‘People Helping People: The Future of Public Services’ in collaboration with NESTA and the Cabinet’s Office Centre for Social Action. This is part of the UK wide new agenda to connect organisations doing social good with public services and government. Goeff Mulgan, Chief Executive of NESTA led a packed schedule of talks, workshops and networking.

A key note speech from Rt. Hon. Brooks Newmark MP, Minister for Civil Society marked his first public speech since taking his newly appointed role, nice to meet you! We met with some of the most exciting innovators working in the UK and overseas who are committed to their organisations making contributions to society. Leah had some very interested conversations with CodeClub, Spice, Shared Lives Plus, FutureGov, and The Thought collective (all the way from Singapore!) amongst many more.

CARIAD are committed to designing new innovations which have a positive impact on society. The Breaking Bread project will be following these initiatives closely as the project begins to scale up and work with volunteers in the community, we are excited to extend our reach to work across public services and government in Wales. Maybe even next year CARIAD will be one of the exciting new innovators.

Leah has a chat with Radio Cardiff about Breaking Bread

Leah met up with Luke from Cardiff Voluntary Services Cardiff this week when he asked her to appear on their volunteering broadcast to talk about her latest project Breaking Bread. She talked about recent innovations with CARIAD and new plans to extend her recent successful workshops.

Leah has received some extended funding from Cardiff Met Alumni and development fund in the interim and the Breaking Bread team are exploring new opportunities. Watch this space! We shared our air time with @BulliesOut an award winning Charity providing help and support to people and organisations affected by bullying.

Thanks Luke, really enjoyed it and looking forward to working with you in the future 🙂 You can listen to the cast here http://www.mixcloud.com/CardiffInAction/