In July two young people from KWMC represented Bristol and presented their prototype for a new game to a packed audience in Vienna.
Europeana Creative Culture Jam was the final showcase event of Europeana Creative, a groundbreaking project that explores ways for creative industries to connect with cultural heritage. The two-day event was held at the Austrian National Museum in Vienna, with participants attending from across Europe.
Earlier this year we hosted a Culture Jam pre-event, where young people aged 13-18 spent the day exploring content from Europeana’s digital cultural heritage archive. They were given the following brief: ‘create a product that reuses archives and/or enables people to view archives in an interesting way.’
The group of 14 were introduced to the cultural heritage archive, discovering what archives look like and how they can be re-used, then they took part in five workshops facilitated by a laser cutter design artist, a playground engineer, a games designer, a clothes designer and a creative arts practitioner.
The young people then had 45 minutes to research the archives, come up with an idea, create a prototype and finally present back to the wider team. Some of the ideas were:
A chessboard, with 3D printed figures using archive character designs. The chessboard itself would use simple light and dark archive photographs as the board squares (Louis, 13)
A 2D computer game called ‘Time Jump’, targeted at young people aged 10-16. Time Jump takes the gamer through different time periods in different countries, from cave person to robot. As the character goes through the levels the background scene will use archive images (e.g. Barcelona streets from 1960s). Challenges and objects within each scene will incorporate archive (e.g. the character will wear First World War uniforms taken from a historic photo if jumping through Germany during this time) (Kieran, Casey, Weronike & Nishan, all 13)
A playground designed using images of archive chocolate wrappers! (Mohammad, 14)
Kieran and Casey travelled out to Vienna with our team to present Time Jump to the other Culture Jam teams.
Mena Fombo, our Programme Manager (Young People), said: ‘The Jam was great: there was really a positive energy in the room. Most young people had never heard of archives or prototypes before the event, and by the end of the day most of them had given presentations on their re-use of archive to the whole room. I was astounded by some of the prototypes – young people brought some really innovative, new and exciting ides to the table, and they did it in such a short time – if only we could now make them all!’
Pupils attended the Bristol Jam from the following schools and colleges: Bridge Learning Campus, City Academy, Ashton Park, City of Bristol College and Bristol Steiner School.