Creative Wales Exchange Network
With funding from FabCre8, Members of the Enchanting Technologies network from special schools around South Wales gathered at FabLab Cardiff to create scenarios based on a series of technology probes. The ideas for the probes came from Digital Imagining Lab 1, held at Ysgol yr Deri. The probes were created by our technology/computer science/arts team: Parisa Eslambolchilar, Aiden Taylor, Jon Piggot, Patricia Puertas and MFA student, Sam Kitcher using Teensy, Arduino and Touch Board as low cost platforms for exploring prototyping, digital fabrication and co-production. By the end of the day we amassed a wealth of low-fidelity mock-ups, stories and sketches that demonstrate our shared vision for making enchantment the route to learning and self expression for pupils with profound disabilities.
Thanks 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.
Thanks to everybody for attending our showcase event at the Wales Millennium Centre especially the staff and service users from the Gladys Resource Centre at Aberdare for creating such a memorable performance. Thanks also to Touch Trust, CEWN, SIP and all of our other supporters for making the past two years so memorable and successful.
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!
Leah 
and Gary Beauchamp from CARIAD had an informative morning at The Atrium this week, collaborating on the latest CEWN event, scoping potentials for creative knowledge exchanges under the title ‘Living Longer, Living Well’. It was an eventful morning, developing persona profiles and brain storming early ideas and interventions for our scenarios.
The afternoon saw the development of our int3erventions to new heights through re invigorating an old collaboration with ThinkArk and PlayArk creative companies in Cardiff. Looking forward to further collaborations developing our new ‘Breaking Bread’ service, facilitating residents in care homes to make bread. Watch this space!
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
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.
