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Heritage and Health walked hand in hand as a small team visited Marske to take “Digital Postcards” today. The walk began at Winkies Castle Folklore Museum and followed a route set up by Joan Russel. Joan had made up a book of the route complete with heritage images of several locations and the team set off to take current pictures of each site.

Above, the team prepare for the photographic march. Joan gave a running commentary on what proved to be a most interesting afternoon. When we reached the beach we got talking about Marske Fishermans Choir and then the fishing industry in general which prompted Barry to tell us about the Tuna steaks he had marinading in Soy Sauce, Honey and Garlic (our mouths watered !) The walk finished by the grave of Captain Cooks father in the Marske cemetery. The finished images will end up in the Octorama tour which you can read about here. Tomorrow it’s Skinningrove.

Following on from yesterdays Marske visit we once again hit the Healthy Heritage Highway and had an afternoons walk right through Skinningrove. We were met at the Tom Leonard Mining Museum by Barry Hunt and by the time we reached the Doorstep Green we were also  joined by Tommy Evans so we had the full compliment of the famous Skinningrove dynamic duo. Tales of folklore, history, nature and regeneration abounded as the team snapped away with their cameras.

Image below the team at the Sealife Mosaic (click here for the story)

June had brought along her mum and whilst she matched us step for step she had her own Skinningrove stories having herself lived there and attended school in what is now the Riverside building. There was some tale of buying cigarettes at school aged 6 but we turned a deaf ear to this. Luckily our route took us past the Riverside building so we enjoyed tea and lemon cakes (no cigarettes this time) We have  heard stories about the German air raids during WW2 from the school log but but Junes mum had actually experienced the evacuation from the school and taking cover in the mine.

After tea we went onwards through the village. At 14 Stone Row we stopped for my own little bit of Skinningrove heritage about how I installed the first public computer in the village there. Then it was back to the professional raconteurs (Tommy and Barry) whilst we visited the  landmarks of the Sylvania Anchor, the Village Mosaic and the Repus. Barry even repeated the story of “The Boat Comes Home”  (The Repus) for some passing walkers on the Cleveland Way. How times have changed, walkers used to hurry through here without pause.

Our visit ended with a privileged visit to the Skinningrove Chapel. The Tour Goes On ! if you want to be involved email s.d.thompson@tees.ac.uk

The gallery below (click to enlarge) shows the team at work. The actual pictures will be seen at the exhibition in the summer. Read the rest of this entry »

How many of you have got hooked on Twitter? You know, where you write in less than 140 characters, “had muesli for breakfast this morning” and your devoted followers gasp in admiration as they read of your latest exploit. You then go on to read just how many of the people you are following also had muesli for breakfast but more importantly how many did not! Actually that’s how it seems at first but Twitter can become more useful. I’ll blog my personal discoveries another time but for now I wanted to share some irreverent stories with you.

If you are not a Twitterholic maybe this will interest you. The following are two different representations of my personal twitter account as a newspaper: Twitter Times and Paperli If you do have a Twitter account perhaps you’d like to create your own, it’s easy just follow the prompts.

Now, if you are a Twitterholic perhaps you need a way to feed your addiction without your boss and colleagues knowing. Enter SPREADTWEET! This is Twitter cleverly disguised as a spreadsheet, no one need know. I’ll not tell a soul, your secret is safe with me.

Finally, I came across something most upsetting. Take a look at http://friendorfollow.com/ – try it on your twitter account. Makes interesting reading. Firstly you notice that one or two friends and colleagues who’s lives you’re following in intimate detail aren’t paying a blind bit of notice to yours. Then there’s the obvious non follower, brands and cellebs probs will not follow you (though some do) Eg Chris Evans isn’t following me back I’ll forgive Chris, he has loads of followers but doesn’t follow many people. But what does one do about the others? Maybe drop a note saying “hey I felt sure you’d want to hook up right back with me” or just forget it. Perhaps a little bit of sulking might be called for or maybe some people need to be dropped. Not quietly you understand, they have to see the hand of the assassin. Perhaps a little email – “he dude, you’ve been DROPPED. I ain’t following you on Twitter any more! Read and weep, LOSER”

If this has peaked your interest and you have to Tweet for business not just pleasure (?) you may be interest in the new Social Media for Enterprise course.

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There was a Day of Cultural “Blogcasting” from Destinations in Saltburn on March 4th to tie in with European Get Online Day. A team of community media volunteers worked from a temporary studio upstairs in Destinations to put out a five hour programme of sound, video and images. A couple of clips came in from Latvia. Whilst it was a little disappointing that more content did not come in from our European partners we de get over 2000 viewers on the day and the visitor map to the right (click to enlarge) shows where our viewers were coming from. We even had Community Media students from Brighton University assigned to study our work.

The event was launched by Cllr Barry Hunt, The Mayor of Loftus and was followed by wide and varied content ranging from animations to poetry performances.

Some notable items: A live unedited walk along Skinningrove Jetty followed by Tommy Evans’ update on Otters, Marske Fishermans Choir and the East Cleveland Image Archive

You can see the whole event here or watch it in the order it was transmitted. (Just scroll down and click on “older entries” at the foot of each page. All in all a great sucess and we’ll be running more Blogcasts. If you would like to be involved in the next one as a contributor or a participant then please contact s.d.thompson@tees.ac.uk

http://www.skinningrove.tv/image-archive/http://www.skinningrove.tv/image-archive/

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A little while ago a small group of enthusiasts began to meet in Loftus Library where they were digitising an image collection. I set them up with a website and ran a session or two on how to upload their images and so Loftus Digital Village was born.  Over the coming weeks and months the archive grew at an amazing rate. Folks started to send images by email or bring them into the Library for scanning. Others left messages in the comments identifying people and objects in the pictures.

Do you have a passion for people, their lives and their issues? Are you interested in capturing them on camera and making it into a different kind of movie? Could you inform, entertain and surprise an audience?

Northern Film & Media in partnership with Community Channel and Sheffield Doc/Fest are launching ”Capture 2010” a factual and documentary talent development scheme and will provide you with access to industry professionals, talent spotters, broadcasters, exhibition platforms and some project funding.

NFM  are looking for energetic Film Makers who have a passion for making content that could make a difference to an issue, a cause or a community.

They want to find talent that has a desire to innovate and are willing to go the extra mile to draw attention to their projects and reach a wide audience.
Read the rest of this entry »

The social media world is Buzzing (pun intended) with news of Google Buzz which has achieved a massive number of users since launching only last week. If you are a Gmail user you probably noticed it appearing below your inbox.  Since the Google Buzz launch there has been a furore about privacy concerns [ see article ] which Google has reacted quickly to address. The general opinion is that the genie is out of the bottle and Buzz is here to stay. Personally I don’t spend my life on social networking sites but if you want to dip your toes in a combination of Facebook and Twitter is enough to be social online. I’d say, add Buzz to that too because it adds a new dimension to your email inbox and just as Twitter and Facebook are different beasts, Google Buzz has a uniqueness to it too.

So how about making them all play nice together?

With thanks to Ari Milner who posted an article about integrating Facebook ad Twitter into Gmail, I now have Buzz, Facebook and Twitter all in one place. Here’s how it’s done……..

1. Go to Gmail Labs. (you should find this at the top right of Gmail. –see pic below)
2. Activate “Add any gadget by URL” in Gmail Labs — you’ll find it near the bottom of the list.
3. Now go to Settings (to the right of labs in image above) and then  Gadgets. Here you’ll find a place to add Gadget URLs.
4. Add the TwitterGadget App. This lets tweet from the sidebar of Gmail. To do this copy  the following URL and paste it into Gmail’s Gadget settings https://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml
5. Add the Facebook Gadget. To add it, copy and paste this URL into Gmail’s Gadget settings
   “http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/104971404861070329537/facebook.xml”
6. That’s it – Facebook, Twitter and Buzz are integrated into your email account. Click here to see my set up. Hey ! please don’t read my email!

If you’ve enjoyed this, watch out for the new “Social Media for Enterprise” course coming out of Teesside University.

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A unique exhibition will run at Middlesbrough’s Python Gallery from Feb 18th to March 12th featuring the work of staff at Teesside University’s School of Computing

School of Computing staff at Teesside University work in a variety of fields, meaning they are able to teach drawing and computing skills which combine traditional 2d drawing and painting skills to create conceptual computer created imagery, mostly based on and for the computer game industry.

Staff continue their art-practice as part of their on-going research and they have produced, for this exhibition, a collection of eclectic work, including photography, drawing, painting, sculpture and animation.

Featured in the exhibition is what is believed to be the world’s first 3D print of a ‘Mandelbulb’ and also Maggie Parker’s seminal works, ‘Infinity’ and ‘Torus’.  These pieces are impossible to make in the ‘real world’ due to their complexity of shape, only being able to be manifested in the ‘real world’ by recreating them using a 3d printer.

The retiring Dean of the school, Derek Simpson says “This exhibition, to be held at the Python Gallery, Middlesbrough, is an excellent opportunity for both academic and ancillary staff to consolidate their status as artists in both the public’s and students’ eyes and disseminate this work into the larger community”.

Python Gallery, Royal Middlehaven House, Gosford Street, Middlesbrough, TS2 1BB, Telephone: 01642 247745

The community animation event (Animex Fringe) in Saltburn on Thursday 11th Feb was a tremendous successes with a full house for the matinee (in which we hooked up with children and police in Latvia) and around 80 people for the evening event. The event made it onto Latvian National TV !

You can relive the event on the blog at www.saltburn.org.uk or if you really want to re-run the event in the order it happened click here ( it builds slow but quickly gets media rich) – just read each page, scrolling down and then click “older entries” at the bottom. As well as the hook-up with Latvia, the event was followed by people in Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey, Sweden, Finland and the UK.

The event saw the world premier of “The Force is With You” which you can enjoy below.

“The Seer Sung Husband” a new paperback of Bob Beagrie poetry is released this month by Smokestack Books,  priced at £7.95 (ISBN: 978-0-956034-14-4)

The Seer Sung Husband tells the story of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the sixteenth-century Northern rebellion that briefly defied the authority of Church and State. Tobias Shipton, carpenter and husband of the Yorkshire witch and soothsayer Old Mother Shipton, weaves a wyrd tale of love and loyalty, rebellion and royal retribution. The Seer Sung Husband is a book about folklore and myth, imagination and belief. It’s a portrait of England at a time of radical social, religious and political crisis. It’s a magical realist verse-epic set against the violent upheavals of 16th Century England. It’s a book about witchcraft and statecraft, religious faith and political betrayal.

1 x Visual Artist Required

To undertake community engagement sessions with young families and then to create and paint* a mural in the crèche, as well as creating a piece to be displayed outside.

* They  are open to other mediums

Please refer to the project outline for more information and all application details. Please note the deadline for completed applications is 9am Monday 22^nd February 2010 and that work will need to be completed by the end of March. PLEASE NOTE TIGHT DEADLINE

Please download the project outline for more information & details of the application process at www.teesvalleyarts.org.uk/newsandevents.html

Or email info@teesvalleyarts.org.uk to have the information emailed to you

Terms and conditions

The artist must supply original Enhanced CRB documentation (dated no older than March 08) and evidence of current Public Liability Insurance cover to TVA before appointment; be responsible for their own taxes and national insurance; comply with any health and safety requirements of Acklam Whin Centre.

Total fee to artist – £1,500 (inclusive of any VAT)

The fee to the artist is for creating and painting an indoor mural and external piece, and to attend and participate in two community engagement sessions at Acklam Whin Centre to involve children and parents in the creation of ideas/ images for the mural and for a site visit/ project meeting/s and for any ‘off site’ work as necessary. Fees are inclusive of project travel and any VAT.

There is a materials budget of £400 for the project.

Acklam_Whin_Mural_Project_Outline (PDF)