UK Lockdown Archives

A group of young people gather before a ‘Creative Hub’ session on Wednesday afternoons.

As of Monday 19th April, Jump Studios has opened the door again to young people to enjoy the after-school sessions!

We’re back!

This week was special as it marked the first time of 2021 that we opened our doors for young people.

Facilitator Jack and Will assisting three young people on laptops.

Since March 2020, we’ve had to change something we did almost every day at Jump Studios; we’ve stopped being able to deliver after-school sessions in person.

We recently talked about what that experience has been like and how we dealt with the changes, if you want to check out that blog post. But for now, the recent changes in the COVID guidelines meant that we can have young people back in the media centre.

How does it work in-line with the COVID guidelines?

To put it simply, caution!

The current government guidelines allowed us to open our doors from the 8th of March, but with the Easter break looming, we decided it was best to begin the next stage when we had found our feet a little more.

Three young people arriving for the after-school sessions, all wearing masks.

Firstly, we are all regularly tested.

Every member of staff on the Jump Studios team are tested regularly, whether before or during work. This is not just including those working directly with the young people.

In the Jump Studios team, we prefer to use the tests from home before we come into the office each morning.

Secondly, we distance out activities and keep strict guidance on how many young people and staff can be in a room at one time.

Three young people on desks spaced apart at the beginning of a session.

Whilst it does make you wonder whether you’re in an episode of Black Mirror at times, the enforced distancing between us is a necessary hurdle in reopening our doors.

Even in our large studio, where we would once have 30+ young people running wild – we now have brought that right back to a maximum of 6 young people and 2 facilitators.

Thirdly, we wear masks.

It’ll come as no surprise to find that, when you’re not completely in your own space, you are wearing a mask.

That applies for the young people, staff and parents.

A young person wearing a mask during a ‘Maker City’ session.

How has it gone?

This week saw us run Control Alt Delete on Monday afternoon, Maker City on Tuesday afternoon and Creative Hub on Wednesday afternoon.

It has been amazing to let young people back in through the doors and, whilst it is only the beginning, we can already feel a slight buzz around the place.

Knowle West Media Centre is a place that was designed to be a hub for creativity and technology, so it has felt very close to our values.

We’re aware that it must be difficult for the young people, who have to uphold these strange measures throughout their whole day at school before coming to the after-school sessions, but we genuinely get the feeling that the space that we create for them is a return they welcome.

Youth programmer for Maker City, Clara, says: I feels so refreshing to be back in the space with the young people! Especially seeing them create stickers and take them home!

Youth programmer for Control Alt Delete and Creative Hub, Mike, says: It has been so great being back at KWMC. We’ve missed all of the young people and can’t wait to deliver exciting (and safe!) activities with them.

Here’s to next week and many, many more to come!

Youth facilitator Jack, playing guitar with young people.

For the best part of the last year, our work with young people has been stripped back from a vibrant and collaborative setting in our centre to over Microsoft Teams. But how are we doing it?

Back in January 2020, we had just started another term of our projects that help young people engage in technologies and the arts.

Maker City school session with Artist Megan Clark-Bagnall delivering a social action masterclass.

But like most other things, that came to an abrupt stop in March when the national lockdown was announced. So what changed and how have we adapted?

The start

All of our sessions up to this point had been in person, where we could interact and support young people wherever we could. It was incredible to be able to see the buzz of creativity the sessions created with the young people.

But that was no longer an option.

From when the lockdown came into place in March through to May, we were finding our own feet with the new virtual world and we needed to know what was needed in the community.

We contacted all of the young people that attended our sessions and their guardians to see what they needed from us. These were unprecedented times (as I’m sure you heard a million and one times in March of 2020) and we wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing.

But the need to keep the after-school sessions going in an online format was clear, therefore we pushed on with the shift to virtual sessions.

How did we adapt in the first virtual sessions?

Our facilitators, Jack, Rapha and Mike during a virtual session.

It’ll come as no surprise to hear that we didn’t hit the ground running. This was new to us as it was the young people. So what issues did we notice?

‘Virtual Fatigue’

We realised that the young people were on their computers all day at school. They were going a full-day in front of a monitor, before coming for an extra hour and a half with us. It was intense.

How did we address this? We encouraged as many breaks as necessary. Whether this meant taking a cup of tea or just going outside for five minutes, any breaks were encouraged to get young people away from screens.

Zoom VS Mircosoft Teams

Zoom was very popular – but was deemed insecure, so there was an organisation-wide decision to not use Zoom and for all sessions to be on Teams. This was problematic as Teams was not as accessible. No breakout rooms, only four cameras on the screen at a time and the chat function is clunky. Zoom seemed so much easier to use!

How did we address this? Well, we persevered! Trying to make sessions as engaging as possible and use different apps to keep the sessions interesting. Luckily, Teams has now upped its game, with breakout rooms, can see more people on the screen and more reactions!

Not being able to reach as many young people

We were missing the element of working in schools. Pre-COVID, we would work in up to four local schools a week which meant we were working with a much wider range of young people and were able to support teachers and young people in school through arts, tech and music as part of their extra-curricular activities.

How did we address this? We spoke with teachers and developed new ways to support them and the young people who are still in school (vulnerable and key worker children). This led to the development of a new way of working: semi-virtually. We would work with the teacher to be able to deliver engaging, creative activities to pupils in school through Teams. Essentially, the Jump Studios Team were virtually in the classroom!

In 2021, we have really started to get into the swing of things with our sessions and we are only going to get better. Whilst it isn’t the perfect situation for creativity and collaboration, we are still really happy with the progress the young people make.

How are we finding it?

A look at what it has been like for the programmers that run the sessions.

Mike Moast: Control Alt Del, Creative Hub & Sound Wave.

The last 12 months has been a whirlwind to say the least. We have all tried to find our own feet in all of the uncertainty the past year has thrown at us, and that includes all of the young people that we work with. They have shown great resilience through the pandemic, school closures and national lockdowns. They have also tackled our sessions being adapted to be delivered online, to socially distanced sessions and back online again with the same resilience and tenacity.

Last year we took a deep dive into the world of virtual sessions, which was quite daunting at first as we have never done anything like that before, but knowing that young people had an appetite for it spurred as to deliver a great virtual programme. As we couldn’t rely on the kit that we have at Knowle West Media Centre, we have had to think creatively as to how we deliver our programme using free and accessible online tools.

Control Alt Delete has been a space for young people to explore coding and new tech, moving everything online did not stop that! It has been great trying different activities from Hour of Code, Google Experiments to Sonic Pi. We’ve seen some amazing 3D designs being made on TinkerCAD and incredible 2D designs on Sketchpad. My highlight so far though has to be playing Skribbl with young people when we ran our virtual gaming evening (and yes, I lost).

Exploring the arts and music making in Creative Hub and Sound Wave brought tremendous amounts of fun. Young people used online digital design tools like Canva to design their own logos and posters, making pixel characters and animations on Piskel and creating fantastic edits on Pixlr. Our young musicians have also been busy learning, writing and recording songs using SoundTrap, blessing our ears with new and exciting music!

Through all of this we have also developed new ways of working collaboratively with each other. From using the ‘collaborate’ button on SoundTrap to work together on a track or a podcast, to using Jamboard to collectively imagine and draw a new and exciting community.

If the last 12 months have taught us anything it’s that even in a virtual world, through creativity and imagination, we can still make great connections. – Mike

Clara Collett: Maker City.

This past year has been immensely challenging for everyone, especially young people who have missed a considerable amount of time at school and activities that they would usually be taking part in. This has meant that young people have not been able to get the same support from teachers and facilitators that they would usually have readily available to them or been able to socialise with friends and build general life skills that come with social interaction.

Despite all of this, the young people that have been engaging with our virtual sessions at Jump Studios have shown a huge amount of resilience and flexibility and have been able to adapt to a new work of working really well. They have been the driving force that has kept us going through the long lockdowns! It has been great to learn a new work of working together; the young people are so well equipped these days and their tech-savvy knowledge has definitely fueled our sessions!

During virtual Maker City, the young people have been able to continue building their digital making skills, and practice digital design and prototyping from their homes. They have had to problem-solve more because sometimes it is not possible to help from the other side of the screen. I have seen a great deal of peer to peer support and young people sharing their experiences of how to fix something that might not be working, and a general consensus that they are all in this together, creating a community feel.

The young people have been able to continue conversations around social action, the things they are passionate about and what changes they want to see in their communities. Now more than ever, it is even more important for young people to have a say and be able to be the change-makers they dream of being! Our virtual Maker City sessions have provided a space for young people to contextualise events that have happened over the past year. It has become a space to discuss how the pandemic is affecting their lives, time for them to reflect on the Black Lives Matter protests that happened in May 2020, and a safe environment to be able to discuss racism and inequalities. They have been able to ponder questions around climate change and think about what young people like themselves can do to make a positive change for their futures.

Amongst all the changes that the young people have had to navigate this past year, I am privileged to have been able to embark on a journey into a new virtual way of communicating, connecting and creating through what has been the toughest year yet! – Clara

With the end potentially in sight, we wanted to look back on what lockdown has been like for the young people in Bristol.

Whether later this year we return to some level of “normality”, it is great feeling knowing that we have adapted to survive in the pandemic.

Thank you for reading.

If you want to talk to us more for information on how we run things or you’d like information about our sessions, please drop us an email at jumpstudios@kwmc.org.uk.

Jump Studios has reopened its doors…

How do after-school sessions work in lockdown?