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Jump Studios Stories

Work Experience 2023

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Last month we had the opportunity to run two weeks of work experience with our funders Bristol City Council Strategic Partnership. This partnership of ARUP, Arcadis and Mott MacDonald, aids the delivery of new infrastructure, homes and regeneration across the city of Bristol. 

We are very lucky to have such an engaged partnership with our funders, who opened their doors to the young people and worked with them through live briefs in engineering, project managing, finance and more. 

During the visit to Mott MacDonald young people helped design new developments for a secondary school in Bristol. Each team were assigned a role for example: project manager, designer, finance officer and worked on the brief.

At Arcadis, young people learnt about the developments taking place in Castle Park and helped brainstorm new developments for the project. 

Young people worked with ARUP to assess upcoming flood risks to the city and design flood defences around Bristol’s harbour, working within the real budget of the live project, considering social value, budget and environmental issues.

Our work wasn’t done with those visits as throughout the week young people also went on a photography expedition around the harbour, made mixed media projects at KWMC and took part in digital fabrication learning at a Maker City Making days at The Factory. 

Maker City Winter Term!

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Our Tuesday night Maker City cohort is gaining great confidence both personally and in using the software and hardware in The Factory. This has been fantastic to see. We have been focusing on social action and incorporating that into different creative sessions. Guiding the young people through the design process from generating ideas in groups to discussing them openly and presenting their ideas publicly. From sketching and prototyping to designing on software and making the final products using The Factory kit.

Through our ongoing research project with UCL, we have recruited a team of young researchers from our core cohort. They have been learning about what makes equitable maker spaces; undergoing various research tasks to help understand and develop the Maker City program. The co-researchers both participate in research studies as well as design and facilitate their own research. 

As well as our after-school session, Maker City has been running weekly sessions at Knowle DGE secondary school through the winter term. Years 10 and 11 have been working together to learn digital fabrication skills. The cohort decided to use their new design skills to develop their own dungeons and dragons gaming world. One young person started designing dice on TinkerCAD which we printed on our 3D printer. The cohort also laser-cut their own personal character pieces in a variety of 2D and 3D design methods and started designing their own game board. 

The young people have been thinking about how to bring the community together and this new design project has allowed them to create a new Knowle DGE gaming community with other students; creating a safe space, thriving with creativity and possibilities which benefits young people’s mental health significantly. 

The young people at Knowle DGE have also learnt how to create stickers using Inkscape and a vinyl cutter. Liam is passionate about nature and green spaces in Bristol and designed squirrel stickers as part of an environmental project. Although he is worried about the climate crisis, Liam made us all smile by telling us about the squirrel near his home which he has seen navigating the zebra crossing like a human – twice!  

 
We can bring lots of our digital fabrication equipment into schools for Maker City sessions and at the end of the term we invite our school cohorts to The Factory to experience the rest of our equipment in action. This term we also ran our school program with Parson’s Street Primary School and Holy Cross Primary School.

At the end of March, we hosted the end-of-term showcase. There was a magical energy in the building as young people took their family and friends on tours around The Factory; showing them their projects and teaching them how to use the kit.  

Our partners from ARUP, Arcadis and Mott Macdonald joined us to support the young people and be part of this celebration. Professionals from each organisation have been mentoring the young people throughout the year, working closely with them to help them build on their ideas and connect their projects to real-world applications. These mentors will continue working with the young people and in July they will collaborate with us to run our once-in-a-lifetime work experience program.

If you are interested in signing up for any of our after-school sessions or have any questions, please email jumpstudios@kwmc.org.uk.

Youth Council 2022 Wrap Up

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KWMC Youth Council had a huge year in 2022. From meeting at the media centre where we planned, discussed and voted for real-world issues to travelling around the city where the young people represented their local community in events all over Bristol.

The young people worked with Play Disrupt and Re:create Filwood to help co-design the new developments in Knowle West by workshopping and sharing ideas in meetings as well as taking part in augmented reality on the streets to use their voice to recreate the future of their community.

The Youth Council helped host KWMC’s Our Space event in April. The young people welcomed the members of the public into the media centre; proudly giving tours around the building and sharing their stories about the Our Space project and their involvement as part of the Knowle West Media Collective.

The young people also worked with Filwood Library by taking part in a toys audit. Playing games and helping the community at the same time.

On Thursday the 23rd of June, KWMC’s Youth Council headed down to City Hall to attend a youth conference hosted by Bristol City Council. The conference was an opportunity for youth council’s from around Bristol to come together and use their voices to help build the future of youth services in the city. 

The building was buzzing with excitable energy as young people gathered from all different corners of Bristol, from Southmead and Lawrence Weston to Hartcliff and Knowle West. Delicious food was provided and some inspirational videos were shared to highlight some of the amazing work being run by youth provisions within Bristol.  

Bristol City’s Youth Council were hosting the event and the members came round to greet all of the young people and talk to them about their passions and ideas. Conversations flowed about diverse topics; young people shared their views on the importance of trust and respect amongst young people and staff at youth provisions. Ideas about vegetable gardens and more green spaces were discussed in the hope to help the environment and the mental health of people in the city. As the young people talked, members of the Council made notes and the young people’s voices were recorded to send on to decision-makers in the Council. 

KWMC Youth Council were lucky enough to meet the Youth Mayor of Bristol, Anika Mistry and be given a tour of the Council Chamber. It was amazing to meet other young people in the city who were also keen to work together and make positive change in Bristol. 

In October, the Youth Council also attended K-West Fest and helped our team at Filwood Community Centre to create a beautiful festival where the community, danced, played games and shared food together. 

With so much to celebrate already, the Youth Council were generously awarded free VIP tickets to watch The Nutcracker in December at Bristol Old Vic. The young people had submitted their art as part of a competition with Bristol Old Vic and were overjoyed to be rewarded with tickets to this production. The show was phenomenal; from the amazing set design to the multi talented actors who were all singing, dancing and playing instruments! We had a magical time and we all left with smiles from ear to ear! 

The young people interviewed each other before and after the show and we have since written reviews about the show which we will be submitting as part of our Arts Awards Qualifications.

“I have never been the theatre but this has to be the best one I have ever seen.”

Young person

Thank you Bristol Old Vic for this unforgettable experience.

KWMC Youth Council has reconnected in 2023 welcoming some new faces and new energy. They are getting stuck into community development straight away, helping to decide on the new Filwood Broadway logo. We also spent the first session of 2023 writing some intentions for the year. The young people have some very exciting ideas in the pipeline!  

To find out more about the Youth Council please contact jumpstudios@kwmc.org.uk 

Jump Studios In Schools

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Maker City at Oasis Academy Connaught

We had the pleasure of running Maker City with the year 6’s at Oasis Academy Connaught this school term.

Maker City is a STEAM (science, tech, engineering, arts and maths) programme aimed at inspiring young people to design and create products using state-of-the-art technology such as laser cutters, 3D printers and sticker machines. We focus on collaboration, creative problem solving and social action to work together to design something that would be useful for ourselves and our community!

It is amazing for us to be able to meet young people in their school environment and offer a different approach to education; broaden their horizons and show them what is available in their local area and how they can be involved.

For the school sessions, we brought iMacs, drawing tablets, and robots to work with. At the end of the term, we bought the young people to KWMC The Factory where they could see their work being made using our other equipment, have a tour of the space, and get stuck in with our hands-on engineering activities.

Sound Wave at Parsons Street Primary School

This term we have run three Sound Wave taster sessions at Parsons Street Primary School with two year 6 classes. We were able to bring in percussive instruments and laptops for the young people to use in the sessions. In our first session, we kicked things off by playing a conducting game where everyone in the class would have a piece of percussion and one young person would come to the front to conduct the room. They could affect when people played and how loud or quiet, they played their instrument. The enthusiasm from the year 6 classes was great to see and we had multiple volunteers all wanting to have a go at conducting.

We introduced the young people to composing and creating their own music using loops on Garageband. In a short period of time, the young people showed their amazing creativity and quickly took to building their own songs with loops and were really excited to show the rest of the class what they had been working on in the session.

Our Sound Wave taster school sessions have also included young people creating their own podcasts! In these sessions, the young people worked in groups to come up with a theme for their podcast, something that they are passionate about or want to talk about. Then after some planning, and writing down a few key points they moved on to recording their podcast on software such as Garageband or Sound Trap. They also looked at creating some theme music or a jingle for their podcast which could be from loops or recording an instrument. Again, we saw amazing creativity from the year 6 classes at Parsons Street and a willingness to share their work with us which we always love to see at the end of sessions.

If you are interested in having any of our sessions at your school, please contact jump@kwmc.org.uk.

If you are interested in signing up for any of our after-school sessions or have any questions, please follow this link or email jumpstudios@kwmc.org.uk.

‘Our Space’ Celebration Event

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Last month, we ran the ‘Our Space’ celebration event at Knowle West Media Centre. The event celebrated the new artwork created by Yoli Ward-Streeter on the railings outside the media centre on Leinster Avenue to welcome the community inside.

Yoli collaborated with the young people of Jump Studios to create the beautiful artwork and at the celebration event, we invited friends and family down to the media centre to celebrate with refreshments and music performances.

Young people performing for friends and family

The young people co-led the event to showcase their musical talent and share their work that they have been rehearsing and practising over this term at ‘Sound Wave’.

Young people displaying their creations

The young people had the chance to share their creative personal projects with their parents and other members of the community. They took ownership of their space and their achievements, the energy was incredible and there was a real sense of pride and inspiration while we celebrated.

Our Space was such an exciting project to be part of, not only through collaborating with the young people but as an artist, I was given an enormous amount of creative freedom and support throughout the project.

Yoli Ward-Streeter

If you get the opportunity, please come down to the media centre and check out the new artwork on display and if you would like any updates you can follow us on Instagram or Twitter.

Jump Studios Stories: Jack Louis Cooper

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We sat down and spoke with musician Jack Louis Cooper about his experiences with Jump Studios and how they have impacted his life.

We first met Jack during The Male Room programme in 2018. This was a programme we ran to support young men in exploring their own masculine identity whilst simultaneously developing their skills as creative professionals.

Jack (middle) with some of the participants of ‘The Male Room’ project in 2018.

Jack met multiple future collaborators and friends on the programme, whom he still works with to this day.

Soon after ‘The Male Room’, Jack was heavily involved in our Sound Wave: Retreat which led him to becoming one of our volunteer Youth Facilitators in our after-school sessions.

Jack leading in a Sound Wave session on a Wednesday afternoon.

In the interview we recorded with Jack, he talks about his own experiences in education and how important he finds after-school sessions in a young persons personal development.

Jack has been working with us for multiple years now and we can’t wait to see how he progresses both professionally and creatively.

If you want to follow Jack’s music, then you can do so at his Instagram found here.

Keep up to date with our journey by following Jump Studios on Instagram and Twitter.