Numiko, an award winning Leeds based digital creative agency

Numiko has delivered a major new online initiative for the NSPCCs ChildLine service, going live just in time for the start of the new school year.

Brought in to collaborate with the charity and its partners, Numiko used their experience of creative Flash development to build the ‘Creative Toolbox’; a bespoke suite of creative tools on www.childline.org.uk that enhance the organisations counselling service, providing young people the opportunity to use drawings, fridge-magnet poetry and other media to create designs that express their emotions and how they are feeling as part of real-time counselling ‘IM-chats’ on the ChildLine website. Drawings can be securely stored in a child’s private ‘locker’ or put on show in the ChildLine gallery for everyone to see and talk about.

Also delivered was the Moodtracker, allowing children to update and track their ‘mood status’ through words and emoticons. ChildLine counsellors can monitor and use these mood change patterns as an aid to start a chat with a child.

Commenting on the work, Darren Navier, Numiko’s Creative Director said; “We have been overwhelmed by the positive effect that the creative tools seem to have already made on young people in such a short space of time. It’s fantastic for us to have worked on a project that is really making a difference and enabling children to express their true feelings in a creative way”.

Ian MacArthur, the NSPCCs Creative Director and Head of Brand Marketing says; “We knew that to be really relevant to children and to reach out to them, we have to be doing amazing things online. These sorts of experiences – really valuable services which children actually enjoy using, will allow ChildLine to reach out and get to the heart of the problems of even more young people in this country. I would like to personally thank Numiko for becoming a critical part of the team that used their creative vision to bring the charities ideas to life”.

As well as developing the tools, Numiko also built a variety of new games for the ChildLine website, ranging from the fun and frenetic to relaxing, chill-out games to help visually wipe away their problems or worries.

The buzz words of the moment was of course discussed at the Forum, in the form of how to use social media effectively. The BBC showcased some cross platform projects that have worked well with the use of social media, such as Adam Curtis’ exhibition ‘It felt like a Kiss’, BBC3 Drama Being Human, an upcoming documentary Digital Revolution which will upload rushes from the documentary onto the BBC site for people to remix and edit as they wish, as well as Cycling The Americas which they presented as a case study for effective use of social media. Mark Beaumont is currently cycling around the Americas which will be shown in a documentary in Spring 2010, however for now, he has built up a large following on Twitter and Facebook, as well as broadcasting into the BBC news with his portable equipment, he also happens to be a great photographer, so he uploads his pictures onto Flickr for people to view and enjoy. All of which has created a great amount of interest in his trip and ultimately the TV documentary.

The main message was if you use Social Media, to do it with real purpose and in a way that is meaningful to its participants. Simple, from a digital industry’s point of view but for the TV industry that is still in its foothills of change, the debate in the session proved that there is still a great misunderstanding in the culture and etiquette of social media. There are lots of blogs, books, articles that explore this mine field but I think from the most basic level the reasoning behind the use of social media needs to focus on the audience/participants and their needs.  It’s more than just having a presence on Twitter, MySpace or Facebook, the question is who and what are you giving them? If you enter into the space of social media the one thing you need to do is ensure you’re providing its participants with something of real value and meaning, get that bit right and you’re in good stead of getting the audience reach you wish for.

How do we prepare for the future of digital literacy? This session looked at how the new digital age can help to aid digital literacy across the board for all types of disadvantaged social groups. Media technology is largely matched with entertainment and not so much on how it is or can be used to help those that are disadvantaged in some way. There were several projects highlighted in this session that focus on the use of digital technology to help those in difficult situations, below are some examples.

Stealth learning, a form of learning whereby the person isn’t aware they are learning. The concept is based on using game play as a way for stealth learning an example of this is a project called Recycled Orchestra.

International Recycled Orchestra

A project for children in poor neighbourhoods, use junk found in an around where they live to create musical instruments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KK-EUiesY8

Katie Gilligan

A 23 year old girl, with Cerapalsy, through using a relatively new machine she has been able to speak read, and even dance, things she hasn’t been able to do as yet. The machine uses igaze technology and multi media technology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWBOfx5u0YY

Meet the broadcast Generation Yourself, a panel session featuring what could be deemed as ‘celebs from the web’. Interviewed by Robert Llewelyn, the three young online talents spoke about how they’ve used the web, in particular You Tube as a way to not only express themselves but carve a career or following that has created off line opportunities that they may never have got, if not for their online presence. Below are the panelists and links to their sites.

Moles Dyer 22 south west England

You tube video blogger, self edits his own content talking about his life and various topics he feels are important. He has created a video CV to send to employers, as a way of representing himself. http://www.youtube.com/user/Blade376

Bryony makes a Zombie movie

Bryony Matthewman is a successful You Tube video blogger who is has now been taksed with the job of making a user generated Zombie movie, online. It has been nominated for a BAFTA in the Interactive category.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/zombies/

John Petrie

Created and runs Popcorn Comedy, started January this year. The night is a mixture of internet comedy mixed with live stand up, some of the talent featured in the nights are from BBC shows.

http://www.popcorncomedy.com/?page_id=2

‘Cassette Boy’ Mike Boler

Writes comedy, taught him self how to edit and now uses footage from TV programmes of celebrities that he either really likes or really doesn’t, depending on which it is, will determine how kind he is in his edit! The apprentice video is his most popular at the moment, and hasn’t been pulled down by the production company, which is a success in his eyes!

http://cassetteboy.wordpress.com/

The panel’s discussion raised a point from a member of staff from the BBC asking the panel what they felt the BBC could do to allow their talents to flourish with the help of the BBC as a resource whilst at the same time not compromising the BBC’s regulatory and editorial legislations. Although happy with the opportunity to work with the BBC the panellists weren’t able to solve the tricky issue of freedom of creativity against compliance legislations it’s something that the institution will need to think carefully about. I think, one of the things that makes the panelists content such a success is the fact that they are risk takers and are happy to break the rules and provide content for the ‘people’, without any editorial or compliance legislations to abide by.  Without that, something might be lost from their work.

Being Human:  The BBC3 non- genre specific drama. The concept of genres is something that the TV industry is very focussed on, the structure of commissioning is built around genres. But what happens when a piece of content comes along that doesn’t fit into one genre, it crosses and mixes them up but in doing so creates a good piece of drama that its audience take to instantly. Well this has been the case for BBC3 drama Being Human. Having been commissioned for its second series, it has successfully crossed the realms of realism with the supernatural whilst at the same time providing an award winning multi-platform offering. The writer Toby Whithouse, initially started off creating a drama featuring a group of graduates living together in a house they’ve just bought. Although he had created a good bunch of charcaters it wasnt until he randomly decided to make one of the characters a Warewolf that he opended up a completely new direction for the drama that led on to another character being a ghost and another a vampire and so on.

What’s interesting about this drama is that it now might open up the minds of commissioners to see drama content in the same way that audiences see it, which is not through barriers of genre, but simply in terms of quality of story and acting and all the other elements that make up a good drama.

If anything it definitely suggests that content creators should continue to strive to create the type of drama that they know audiences want to watch and hopefully that will be what determines its commission and not which genre it successfully fits into.

Last week, I attended the BBC Vision forum, at the BBC’s Television Centre. I thought I would share some highlights from the two days, one of which was a session led by documentary maker Adam Curtis on his collaboration, with Punk Drunk founder Felix Barrett and Damon Albarn who created the music. The exhibition ‘It Felt Like a Kiss’ was shown at the Manchester International festival in August this year which made a great impact and is still being talked about now.  Much has been spoken about the exhibition itself which has received everything from critical acclaim to audience contempt. Adam’s session focussed on the journey he went on and where it ultimately ended up. Adam’s inspiration for the piece derived from the fascination of the way the web has enabled us to create our own narratives, by jumping from web page to page each of us are individually creating our own stories. He wanted to investigate the notion of presenting content digitally, and started to create a film using BBC Archive material that explored the relationship. However, after a conversation with Felix Barrat, this film kick started a project that would combine film, and immersive theatre. Providing a real life journey for the audience to feel and experience. The film was at the core of the piece and all around it was constructed concepts of ‘reality’ , the audience were on what is known as a walk of terror, being exposed to the environment that they had no control over. The piece plays on the heightened emotion of fear, which increases and intensifies the further into the walk they get. The raw emotion of fear fits in so perfectly to this type of medium, as it’s a generic feeling that requires a few carefully placed variables to create. The other emotion similar to fear in that no matter who or where we are from we can all feel it, is Love. Adam was asked if he could create a piece around comedy, he wasn’t sure if it would work however the concept of heightened emotion around love and romance is something he felt could work really well. If we think about real life, Fear and Love are the two distinct emotions that as humans we all feel and can identify with on a universal level. So in a live experience these two emotions are going to be the ones that really affect us, whether we choose for it to or not just as in real life. Looking forward, I think there is definitely room for the TV+web+live experience to grow, especially as our desire for clever rich content being told in new ways is growing stronger than ever before.

http://www.mif.co.uk/events/it-felt-like-a-kiss/

http://www.psfk.com/2009/09/4-way-narrative-hbos-video-cube-installation.html

So the Guardian and Harris Interactive have a wonderful study of how people would prefer to pay for online news content.  The people say subscriptions over micro payments.  Just a pity that 95% of people would not be prepared to pay at all.

I’ve been invited to take part in one of Europe’s largest documentary festivals, IDS to discuss the possibilities that the internet offers to documentary makers.

I’m sitting on a panel called ‘It’s not only television’ with Adam Gee from Channel 4, Mark Atkins ( formerly SBS), Leena Pasanen from YLE in Finland and  Bruno Felix from Submarine in the Netherlands.

I’m hoping it will be a really interesting discussion about the exciting experiences that can be achieved with true cross platform media!

Three of Numiko’s digital gems have been nominated for this year’s DADI Awards – ‘Britain From Above’ for the BBC/Lion ( which was also winner of a Digital Emmy in Cannes this year), ‘I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!’ and ‘Britannia High’ for ITV have also been shortlisted.

Fingers crossed! The awards bash is on November 19th.