CARIAD attends second Connected Studio Event

Posted on 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!

CARIAD presents at international conference in Lisbon, ‘Creative Processes in Art’

Posted on by Wendy

DSC03562CARIAD’s Leah Mc Laughlin presented some of her research activities at the international conference ‘Creative Processes in Art’ at the Centre for Fine Arts Lisbon.http://creativeprocessesinart.weebly.com/index.html. There was plenty of insightful discussion over the two days. Some interesting papers for CARIAD included: the relationship between corporate businesses and performance art. We were also treated to a guided tour of the infamous University building which houses the faculty of Fine Arts, it even included areas which are no longer open to the public!

It is always very informative participating in such an interesting conference topic and to speak to a largely theoretical and philosophical audience. It seems that whenever ‘creativity’ is discussed, its multiple interpretations and various modes of application and understanding elicit thoughtful and provoking debate. It also became apparent that CARIAD’s commitment to applied methods also has a clear and necessary place within these largely theoretical consortiums.

The ways in which CARIAD directly works with people and our developing research methods to accommodate this was a point of interest and praise for many of the delegates. Some very interesting relationships were established and CARIAD are looking forward to many future collaborations.

CARIAD awarded RIA (Research Innovation Award) to support new PhD Student Steve Coleman investigating the benefits of creative play for people with dementia

Posted on by Wendy

DSC02110CARIAD are delighted to announce the latest edition to the team, our first fully funded PhD student Steve Coleman. Steve was awarded the prestigious RIA (Research Innovation Award) scholarship from Cardiff Met to research the therapeutic benefits of creative ludic play for people with dementia. This is a part of one of CARIAD’s bigger projects led by Cathy into well-being within the aging population.

Steve completed an outstanding Masters here at Cardiff Met which looked at the healing potentials of being playful. We are thrilled that he has been given the opportunity to develop the project here at CARIAD and to have such a dynamic and committed new academic associate to contribute to the centre. I’m sure everybody will be keen to extend their congratulations in due course. On behalf of CARIAD, well done Steve excited to have you on board and looking forward to working with you!

‘Promoting Playfulness Amongst Older People’ OPAN RDG workshop 2 Swansea, Tapestri Building, 31th July 2013

Posted on by Wendy

DSC02210CARIAD 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.

Digital Stories at the Hollies School with the wonderful Glynis!

Posted on by Wendy

DSC02208CARIAD 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!

Gesture-Based Interpretations: Video Analysis at trinity Fields School and Resource Centre Caerphilly

Posted on by Wendy

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.

Material Matters Research Symposium 05th June 2013

Posted on by Wendy

DSC02160 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.