DIGITAL COMMUNITIES
CONTENTS
1Introduction
2Institute of Digital Innovation
3Global Business in an Online World
4Digital Villages Network
5Digital Champions
6Digital Role-Playing
7Animex
1Introduction
Since its origins in the 1930s as Constantine Technical College, Teesside University has always played an integral role in its local community.
As the principal higher education institution in the area, recruiting some 60% of its 28,000 students from the Tees Valley and 70% from the North East as a whole, we take seriously our responsibility not only to promote and support access to higher education, but also to make sure, through an excellent learning experience, that our students emerge with the skills and attributes to make a difference in the real world. Our strong partnerships with schools and colleges are central to this approach.
A major employer in our own right, we make a direct contribution to the economic vitality of the sub-region; and in our extensive work with employers, we look to provide the skills, research, innovation and talent to help regional business grow and prosper in the face of increasingly global competition.
Through the recent economic downturn, we have placed a particular emphasis on helping people and businesses develop their skills and productivity for employment, survival and growth, working particularly with our Further Education College partners to provide flexible, accessible and relevant programmes.
It is critically important to ensure that the knowledge, expertise and resources of the University can bring direct benefit to local people and organisations. The roles of individual students and staff in supporting our local community can be very significant, whether through volunteering, serving on governing bodies, or providing services or expertise to business or community organisations.
One way in which this support can be provided is through digital technology. Fast becoming essential to modern-day living, it touches every part of our lives, from online information and services such as banking and shopping to communicating through email and social networks such as Facebook.
Yet the reality is that many people throughout the North East are unable to take full advantage of digital technology, whether through a lack of skills, knowledge or access. And as information communication technology (ICT) developments continue to gather pace, the digital divide looks set to widen.
In this document, we use a series of case studies to provide a brief insightinto the many ways in which the University, working with its partners, is using digital technologies to help create new opportunities and enrich lives.
May 2010
2 Institute of Digital Innovation (DigitalCity)
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The Institute of Digital Innovation (IDI) is part of DigitalCity, a major regional initiative led by the University and Middlesbrough Council to grow a super-cluster of digital media businesses in the North East. Putting research alongside business to build a high-growth economic base, the IDI is at the heart of a wide range of activities focused on supporting regional growth and development, from school and community projects through to business creation and innovation.
The Institute (IDI) is housed in the £12m Phoenix Building, on the University’s town-centre campus in Middlesbrough. Its specialist facilities include commercial business space for digital companies who work with the University’s research base, high-spec studios for DigitalCity Fellows developing new businesses, a state of the art sound stage, and a wide range of research units.
IDI provides the space for people to develop their digital skills, expertise and career options, working in top-class facilities alongside research development teams and businesses looking for the next big thing in digital development.
A short distance away is the council’s DigitalCity Boho Zone, an exciting new town centre development providing business acceleration, networking and accommodation for a fast-developing cluster of indigenous and inward-investing digital companies.
DigitalCity Fellowships Scheme PIC
Through the IDI’s DigitalCity Fellowships Scheme, ambitious graduates and alumni get the opportunity to develop their creative ideas into go-ahead businesses.
Fellowships offer the opportunity to develop commercially viable portfolios or business proposals, providing bursaries, focused business and skills training, and support and mentoring from industry specialists. Spring 2010 saw the scheme create its 100th business.
The story of one of those businesses illustrates how the DigitalCity experience has helped.
Dominic Lusardi and Sam Harrison both graduated with visualisation degrees in 2001 andnow run a thriving digital media company, Animmersion UK Ltd.
When Sam won a DigitalCity Fellowship, he got the time and space todevelop the Animmersion business concept with University-supported mentors.
Then, four years ago, the pair took the plunge and formed Animmersion UK Ltd as a limited companyspecialising in digital media and technology, particularly 3D animation. During its first 18 months, the fledgingcompany was based in one of Teesside’s on-campus business incubation units.
Last year, Sam and Dominic moved into the University’s Institute of Digital Innovation (IDI), and now, with the business expanding, they have moved into Boho One – the development supported by Middlesbrough Council and the regional development agency to helpattract a super-cluster of digital companies to the town.
‘We are a visualisation studio producing interactive digital media content through the use of 3D computergraphics. This can be applied to education, training, marketing and promotion,’ said 31-year-old Dominic,originally from Leeds.
‘Our clients so far have ranged from Schneider Electric and Kinetic World Wide through to architects wanting tovisualise their new building concepts.
The company recently worked with Hartlepool Council, building a planning tool with animation and interactive digitalmedia to help cope with the one million visitors expected at the 2010 Tall Ships event.
Dr Jim TerKeurst, Director of the IDI, says, ‘Animmersion is a great small company that shows how DigitalCity can help young entrepreneurs. Sam and Dominic were attracted to Middlesbrough by Teesside University, and with the help of DigitalCity arenow making a real contribution to the Tees Valley and the region.’
3Global Business in an Online World
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Over the past few years, digital technologies have transformed the way we do business. Now a new concept takes the digital revolution a stage further, with a huge new expo space, whose 1,600 hectares will attract commercial exhibitors from all over the world. But it can only be found online.
The new technology of the 3D internet is opening up new vistas for business looking to operate on a global stage. For the first time, photo-realistic online locations offer potential as virtual places of business, used by people to gather together to share information, to exhibit their products, and to make money.
The University’s Centre for Design in the Digital Economy (dlab) is using the new technology to build one of these virgin spaces, known as City1.
'We call what we are doing immersive commerce,” says Professor Brian Wilson, Director of dlab. “ If you have people scattered throughout the world and want to gather them together for a team meeting to discuss a set of plans laid out on a table, you can do that in your virtual office building. If you want to launch a product or hold a conference, the virtual environment can support 10,000 ‘avatar’ virtual delegates at the same time.
The first organisation to settle in this new space is the new Northern Design Centre, which has taken a ten-hectare plot as a virtual creative quarter for 76 design ventures and SMEs to locate themselves and do business on the 3D web.
Funding for the initiative comes from the European Regional Development Fund Competitiveness Programme 2007-13, and from the University.
Professor Wilson and his team are now marketing City1 as the place to promote and exhibit products on the 3D internet.
‘The spaces being built today will very quickly become the must-use destination for digital marketers and corporations on the 3D web,’ he says. ‘We’re creating a global destination for business.'
4Digital Villages Network
A self-help approach to learning
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In rural East Cleveland, North-east England, where the legacy of steel and manufacturing decline continues to affect daily lives, digital technologies have the potential to overcome isolation and disadvantage by helping to create new skills, and new social and economic opportunities.
Through the Digital Villages Network, the University’s Community Media Coordinator Steve Thompson is working with remote East Cleveland communities on an imaginative and creative range of activities, most of them thought up and led by local community members. They range from a ‘Community Challenge’ online quiz, (which led to a 52 team tournament across the UK), to a Second Lifeanimation used to support the campaign to regenerate a Victorian pier.
A key element of the project is the creation of online community newspapers together with animations, video and text – all of which, of course, means that new skills are needed to deliver them. And so the Villages have also become informal learning communities, using both new technologies and traditional methods of learning.
Alongside the project, a network of community researchers is exploring the use of ICTs in homes and communities across East Cleveland, so that the outcomes can inform future policy and practice on ICTs in rural communities – on a regional, national and European level.
And for the people involved, the advantages are obvious. In an area with comparatively high levels of unemployment and “brain drain”, digital and creative skills and online communication, brokered by the University, are helping to develop a self-help approach to learning, reducing isolation and inspiring confident dialogue about regeneration.
To see how people have been working together to create a wide range of community projects, see .
Three specific examples illustrate the range of activities and partnerships involved:
Diversity Dave, a stop motion animation produced with Redcar and Cleveland Mind, clearly gave everyone a lot of fun while reinforcing a serious message about tolerance and acceptance (see )
And The Force is with you, an animated film aimed at helping communities to deal with the difficult and sensitive issues of anti-social behaviour, puts on show the thespian talents of residents of Saltburn, a seaside village in East Cleveland. The film’s premiere was simultaneously broadcast in Latvia, where the community have developed a strong and lasting partnership ( ).
Finally, the Get Online Day Blogcast shows film, images and audio created by community groups from across Tees Valley
For Steve Thompson, the possibilities for community engagement and empowerment through digital technologies are endless.
“The University continues to support community use of digital technologies through Community Media and Digital Villages,” he says. “What is needed now is to extend this approach to new communities but also to increase the depth of engagement within currently supported communities.
“Our offer will be one of “social learning” where people are introduced to digital tools that bring specific added value to what they already do. We aim to develop and expand the Digital Village concept using technology to provide services and development for very rural villages and settlements where physically networking is very difficult.”
5 Digital Champions
Making IT accessible
Digital technologies are a part of everyday life for many of us, and we’d find it hard to cope without them - but making them accessible to all can be far from straightforward. The Digital Champions scheme, part of a community engagement programme delivered by the Institute of Digital Innovation (IDI), aims to promote empowerment and wider community inclusion, as Jim TerKeurst, IDI’s Director, explains.
“We focus not only on teaching skills but also on showing individuals and groups how to use them to improve their lives. We want to embed the benefits of digital technology throughout the local area,” he says.
Digital Champions provides community leaders with skills in using digital technology to help others. Champions are offered training in anything from blogging and using social networks through to copyright, libel and authorisation.
They then attend a nationally endorsed course to enable them to pass on their newly gained skills.
There are now more than 80 Digital Champions spreading their newly gained knowledge from industrial Teesside to rural Northumberland.
Martin Simpson, a volunteer from Age Concern’s South Tyneside branch, is one of them. “I’ve already got IT skills but was really interested in learning how to teach them to others in the organisation,” he says.
“IT is very important to our projects. Many older people live by themselves and the courses we offer encourage them out of the house. And for people who are housebound, such technologies are vital.”
Another group to benefit is the Middlesbrough-based Black Students Project. The organisation, set up in 2005, helps people from ethnic minorities - foreign students, migrant workers or asylum seekers - settle into their new homes, Project director William Meli says the initiative is helping his organisation to deliver more benefits using digital media and film.
His project has also launched a pilot social networking project in Cameroon enabling people to share ideas on line. One-to-one mentoring is also offered as part of the global education citizenship initiative.
“A lot of ethnic minorities are digitally isolated. Many won’t have had the opportunity to even learn basic IT,” continues Mr Meli.
“The Digital Champion initiative is helping us reach more people both in Middlesbrough and Africa.”
6Digital Role-playing
A new gaming system designed for autistic children
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Autistic children often struggle with communication, lacking the ability to empathise and never developing the social skills they need to interact easilywith others.
It’s a lifelong developmental disability, and sufferers find it particularly difficult to understand facial cues or metaphor – expressions such as ‘you are really cool’, for example, tend to be taken literally, while insensitivity to emotion is another common problem.
Although not curable, research has shown that autism’s effects can be improved dramatically if children receive expert treatment while still very young. But special care and treatment are costly, and often not available.
New software being developed at Teesside University is designed to help autistic children learn about emotional expression and social engagement by using computer-based role-playing games.
‘Our prototype offers great possibility to help young people with social and learning skills, so increasing confidence and self-esteem’, said Dr Li Zhang,an expert in artificial intelligence who is leading the project.
‘A group of 24 autistic children from Darlington, aged 11 to 14, have been testing the software by playing gameswith “avatars” – animated computer games characters which use artificial intelligence to interact realistically withhumans. Often the children assume they are playing the computer game with another child.’
The avatars encourage users to play games depicting social situations, such as, for
example, coping with someone who is ill. They show emotions and facial expressions, reacting in response to the children’s behaviour.
Many systems train children to recognise emotion, explained Dr Zhang, but they do not simulateany interaction, so that while players are taught to recognise emotions, they do not learn appropriate responses to subtle social cues.
Eventually the software could help autistic children to integrate effectively with society and even to get into work. It will be further developed, Dr Zhang said, to create more sophisticated emotional animations and user avatars. ‘We believe that the work is a stepping stone into a much wider use of such systems by education and training in general, providing 24/7 efficient personalised social skill and language training – and offeringautomatic monitoring of progress.”
The study has been a collaboration between Teesside University and commercial partner MellaniuM. The National Autistic Society was also a project partner, and support was provided by Darlington Council and Education Village (EV) which has three schools, one of which caters for special needs.
7Animex
Animating the community
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The University’s School of Computing hosts Animex, a major annual international animation and computer games festival, which this year celebrated its tenth anniversary. One of the largest animation festivals in the UK, Animex is run by School staff with support from many regional organisations and student volunteers. It has a major animation screening programme as well as professional workshops offering an opportunity to meet famous names in the animation and games world.
Alongside its academic and business focus, Animex promotes animation to schools and communities. Animexperience, for example, offers anyone with an interest in animation and computer games the opportunity to learn more at first hand.
Its strong links with educational and community support agencies mean that over 3,000 schoolchildren and their families take part every year.
2010saw the launch of NE Toons, an animation tool that can be used by schoolchildren of primary age to create their own animated world, and in the process support their learning of the national curriculum.
And an animated dinosaur film created by Middlesbrough primary schoolchildren at the festival is to be used by an international palaeontology societyas an example of how animation can be used to inspire young people.
The dinosaurs featured in a short film made at Teesside University earlier this year during a special series of workshops for Year 5 children from three primary schools. Under the supervision of artists and animators from Pixar, Blue Sky Studios and the University, the children createdand animated some fearsome model dinosaurs.
The film was the idea of Stuart Sumida, Professor of Biology at California State University, and a regular visitor to Animex.
Professor Sumida has provided advice on the movement and physiology of animals to a range of animated box office hits, including Beauty and The Beast, The Lion King, Scooby Doo and the Oscar-winning Ratatouille.
Chris Williams, a Principal Lecturer in Animation at the Universityand Animex Director, says: 'The film demonstrates in a very powerful and meaningful way that animation gets kids really interested in dinosaurs.
‘Already the film has been a huge success and will hopefully pave the way for collaborative work between ourselves and colleagues over there.'
The film has been shown to the Society of Vertebrae and Palaeontology in Bristol and will be screened soon in the USA, at the prestigious Carnegie Melon Institute.