Sheffield Melts Creativity – Melt 2008 Inspiration Session – Part 2
This is a brief write-up of my notes from the rather inspiring Melt 2008 Inspiration Session, Part 2. Here’s Part 1.
Here I serve up scribbles from Paula Le Dieu, director of Magic Lantern‘s talk. Like Adam Gee, Paula has been on the Melt panel for a period of time, two years to be precise.
She has worked with the BBC, Guardian, Ofcom, Creative Commons and the international documentary community. Amongst other things, she sits on the executive board of Sheffield Doc/Fest, the leading European documentary festival.
Paula’s talk included several interesting demonstrations on the capacity of media to engage people and effect change. As is usual with my event write-ups, I’ve typed up my notes to share my favourite quotes and notable points, in Paula’s own words.
She started off by defining Web 2.0 as making content flow around the web easier.
She illustrated her point by way of examples:
WeTellStories.co.uk, a partnership between book publisher, Penguin and Six to Start, in which a thriller is literally mapped on the web – web technology helping tell stories. Apparently, alternate reality game developers, Six to Start, also developed the Spooks Code Nine website.
WeFeelFine.org looks for statements like ‘I feel’, ‘We feel’ on the web and magically morphs them into a rather trippy visualisation that bubbles up pictures and statements people have made with those words. Worth a few minutes of play.
TheyWorkForYou.com, social entrepreneurship, social engagement. mySociety’s aim in life is to be as disruptive as possible. Provide as many ways for us to engage with politics with a capital P.
Hansard, the record of Parliament was not provided so mySociety scraped it off the web to make TheyWorkForYou.com.
Worked on the basis of seek forgiveness rather than ask permission. Number 10, after while agreed and let the public see Parliament’s records.
TheyWorkForYou.com lets you see your MP’s voting record, send him/her a message, view his/her expenses and more. Web 2.0 empowers social good and social engagement – use the web to broadcast small social entrepreneurship to the wider world.
Dopplr, founded in 2006 by her friends Matt Biddulph, Matt Jones and Dan Gilmour. They were constantly going to conferences and developed a website that let them see when their friends were in the same city.
They felt a considerable guilt about the impact they were having on the environment with all this travel. Now, you can get a carbon footprint record for your travels on the Dopplr website!
Starting to see that it’s becoming difficult to separate making products with social awareness. The web allows us to connect people to issues and stories.
Paula’s last example was the exhilarating breathingearth.net, a luscious visualisation of carbon dioxide emissions and births and deaths of every nation on planet Earth. In real-time. Spellbinding.
Adrian Friedli from Arts Council England then spoke briefly about being involved in the Melt project.
The 3 year plan for Arts Council England, whose motto is ‘Great Art for Everyone’, is maximising digital opportunities, building on the work done in broadcasting.
It has recently signed a three year partnership with Channel 4. A specific art strand is being developed with 4IP and launches later on in the year.
They saw the potential in Melt in 2005, the value of innovation, artists firmly in the mix. According to Adrian, the Melt approach to programming is every bit as inspiring as the awardees themselves.
This was a sentiment echoed by many of the awardees, more on that later.
I’ll stop here and will continue in another post with an overview of James Kirkham from Holler‘s presentation and a brief look at each of the Melt Awardees presentations.
Related posts:
- Sheffield Melts Creativity – Melt 2008 Inspiration Session – Part 1
- Sheffield Melts Creativity – Melt 2008 Inspiration Session – Part 4
- Sheffield Melts Creativity – Melt 2008 Inspiration Session – Part 3
- 4Talent Inspiration Session – Building Online Communities like Flickr and Habbo Hotel – Part 2
- 4Talent Inspiration Session – Building Online Communities like Flickr and Habbo Hotel – Part 1
