Celebrating community power on the Internet

Two exciting events celebrating the power of the Internet will be staged at the University of Teesside next week.

One is an international conference focusing on helping local communities devise compelling content for websites and the second is a Digital Fringe Festival devoted to computer technology art (see page 2 of this release). Both start on Wednesday 12 September.

The Creative and Connected conference (see programme attached) runs from 12-14 September. It is being organised by the University’s Community Informatics Research and Applications Unit (CIRA), which supports communities wanting to use technology as a tool for community development and empowerment. Academics, business people and local community representatives will be taking part, including Internet ‘guru’ Howard Rheingold from San Francisco.

Also speaking will be New York digital artist Perry Bard, who has been working on a Digital Arts project with a group of young people from North Ormesby – one of Middlesbrough’s oldest communities. The project involves teenagers based at Shape Training. They have produced a chronicle of the memories of older people in the area through a mixture of video, audio and website techniques.

Perry visited the teenagers in May and has since advised them over the Internet and some of the teenagers will speak at the conference.

Brian Loader, CIRA Co-Director, said: “The Tees Valley has played an important part in establishing the agenda for community use of Information Communication Technology and CIRA is working with more than 200 County Durham and Tees Valley groups. The North Ormesby project is a good example of working with the community, empowering people, training them and getting them engaged by providing interesting activities and the kids at North Ormesby loved working on-line with a digital artist from New York.”

Nigel Staton, Shape Training Tutor for the North Ormesby project, added “Those involved found the idea of communicating with someone in New York amazing.”

CIRA’s activities have attracted national, and even international, attention and impressed the Fabian Society, which included two case studies from the Tees Valley in its report Beyond Access, which looked at how disadvantaged communities could develop Web content.

According to Brian Loader content is now the big issue. “As access to the internet becomes more widely available through community and other groups, people will only be motivated to use these facilities if the content is interesting and relevant to their needs,” said Brian.

Fringe Festival

Dovetailing with the CIRA conference on Wednesday and Thursday September 12 and 13 is a Digital Fringe festival devoted to computer technology art with events at various locations around the campus from 10am-6.30pm each day, co-ordinated by former BBC worker Carol Cook, head of the university’s new Centre for Digital Arts and Media.

A major focus will be the presence in the student car park of The Big M, a futuristic mobile building operated by ISIS Arts, where many of the events will take place. The car park is off Southfield Road, Middlesbrough and live bands will be performing during the day.

Festival visitors will be able to enjoy animation, computer graphics, touch-screen technologies, and a film by Chris Dooks based on the 36,000 hours of archive television material which the university holds. It will be shown at 5pm in the Big M on Thursday September 13.

Visitors can also make digital and scanner images of themselves, do voice-overs, play computer games, design websites, experience Virtual Reality, witness photomorphosis where the texture of human skin is changed on scanned images, and have their activities compiled into a CD. Some of these events take place in the Innovation and Virtual Reality Centre.

Carol said: “It will be a really exiting fun-packed showcase for the university at its best. It will show how we are an opportunity university, drawing attentions to some of the things which we do brilliantly. The future development of the Tees Valley is strongly linked with creative industries.”

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