As part of our ongoing commitment to a diverse workforce, we’re very proud to announce that we are now a signatory of the Tech Talent Charter (TTC).
The TTC is an employer-led initiative to encourage greater diversity in the tech workforce of the UK, and was supported in the government’s policy paper on the UK Digital Strategy earlier this year.
“It’s vital for the industry to come together as a whole to do more to show females that a career in technology is incredibly rewarding, to increase the number of females working within the industry, to attract people who are considering a career change, and to encourage younger generations to consider these careers from the word go. One single company can’t do it alone, which is why we’re asking organisations to pledge their support for the Tech Talent Charter and join us on our exciting journey.”
Signatories of the charter make a number of pledges in relation to their approach to recruitment and retention and are supported every step of the way.
Education Programmes
Environmental Sensing
This Girl Codes
Background
This Girl Codes is an exciting example of a partnership approach to STEAM with Junction Arts that's impacted on the aspirations, confidence and skills of a community in rural Derbyshire.
Over the last year children from local schools, in Y5 and Y9, and community groups have explored their cultural heritage through creative challenges with the aim to reduce digital exclusion and empower everyone taking part to believe that ‘they can’.
The approach was somewhat unusual in that it took female experiences rooted in Bolsover, both historical and contemporary, to become the focus for the future through the arts.
It was an 'Interactive Light Night' - driven by the community themselves with their movements and how they interacted with the environment around them.
Creators of IOT-enabled digital flowers gathered at the Castle and their projects were temporarily installed as a new digital rose garden within its walls. As the community approached the Venus Garden and Little Castle on the estate, they sparked interactivity in a way that hadn't been seen before in the town.
Building dialogue between the community and Bolsover Castle
Installing infrastructure, to facilitate data-driven interactivity, into the fabrication of a 17th century estate isn't easy. That said, we knew that taking lessons learnt from previous projects alongside numerous site visits, lots of testing and different network solutions, that we'd make it happen.
At each step of this project we've responded to the artist's brief and Cora's interpretation from the original submission:
"Capturing the imagination and creativity of KS3 girls with This Girl Codes. Phase 2 now brings alive voices from Bolsover through a visual arts project taking the form of a new love story through data science"
One element of the project was to continue the rich dialogue with English Heritage and Bolsover Castle, with its unique community heritage story, building upon links formed and experiences had during phase 1 of This Girl Codes. Junction Arts was particularly interested in encouraging the town to ‘talk’ to the Castle.
Placing smart sensors across the estate to collect environmental and location data, sharing through a server, gave us the capability to rebroadcast our intentions and share those intended and creative outputs. 30 digital roses had been designed and programmed by the Y9 students at The Bolsover School and they acted as data collection points for temperature, collected with Codebug and Envirosense boards.
Technical Architecture
Data from Codebug Connect devices with Envirosense and GPS placed around the castle grounds was also sent to a central server that had been secured within the Venus Garden.
That server then rebroadcast all of the data for the central signals to drive lights installed around the estate and produce a live data feed into Sonic Pi. Read more about sending OSC to Sonic Pi here.
In essence, outputs from the community's movements around Bolsover Castle and the environmental data logged during the evening became an 'interactive light night' display with a light show and music representing those inputs.
The smaller roses created at the community workshop days were controlled with Connect and responded through LED colour changes during the evening as the temperature dropped. Likewise, lights temporarily installed for the event also reacted according to GPS and environmental data communicated through the estate.
Light Night in Bolsover
Educational Aims
Activities engaged student voice to solve real-world challenges facing the local community of Bolsover.
The 'Cavendish' digital roses gave an opportunity for groups to explore event-driven programming techniques and engineer a new and creative solution.
Creative Brief
Inspiration was taken from the original ‘Love’s Welcome to Bolsover’ in 1634, with this new female centred story created with STEAM based activities.
Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was a resident of Bolsover in the seventeenth century. As a poet, philosopher, writer and playwright she was confidently publishing under her own name at a time when most women writers published anonymously.
Her strong voice, achievements and legacy are at the heart of this project. The Blazing World, which she published in 1666, is one of the earliest examples of science fiction.
She was the first woman to attend a Royal Society meetup in 1667. That example in itself was shared through the introductory storytelling, as is Samuel Pepys's diary writing from that day which led to debate and change discussions with the groups of students.
Linking with the Bolsover Model Village, Florence Sykes created a rose garden for the coal miners and her annual strawberry tea events are legendary! Personalised ‘Florence’ roses were digitally created and contained messages of hope to and for the town of Bolsover.
To find out more about the project and funding partners click here
Sharing air quality data. A rose by any other name?
Aug. 27, 2018, 11:13 a.m.
Data Viz
Environmental Sensing
Summer workshops do seem to have taken an 'English Country Garden' theme as we've continue to partner with Junction Arts to grow their digital rose garden for the This Girl Codes programme!
This latest tinkering forms part of plans with another project looking to share air quality data from community projects.
Previous STEAM activities blending digital making with papercraft have been a great introduction to data visualisation possibilities, so we thought we'd explore with these latest data streams.
We've been working with Leeds University to develop resources for upcoming community projects, and supporting an understanding of the science behind air quality has been one of our priorities.
A couple of examples below of questions we wanted to add into the activities with resources to stimulate more conversations and consider changes:
What are the variables that will affect the quality of air at any one time?
How quickly can changes happen and what can the range of readings be like over a period of time?
Can (and how can) changes in behaviour impact on the quality of local air?
Changes in the LEDs added to this project are subtle and act as a comparison to other digital making activities using the first Envirosense board.
Look out for new workshops and project building challenges as we launch more #SenseAndSenseAirBility activities.
Extending Pupil Voice at Bolsover Castle
July 12, 2018, 9:17 a.m.
Education Programmes
This Girl Codes
As we move through the 'This Girl Codes' programme, activities start to focus on the wider community with new workshop dates announced.
Students have been validating their projects through user testing at the castle and comparing data collection with other systems already in place - success, the data was an exact match!
As students share their voice to a wider audience through the Cavendish Roses, they'll also be supporting the programme as mentors to others joining digital making sessions over the Summer.
By the end of September the new digital rose garden at Bolsover Castle really will be an IOT visual spectacle.
If you can't make it on the day, you'll be able to view the open data as we use LoRaWAN to share more widely.
An inspirational and lasting message for everything that #ThisGirlCodes stands for 🌹🌹🌹
This Girl Codes: How partnerships are driving a STEAM exploration through our cultural heritage
June 28, 2018, 10:27 a.m.
Education Programmes
This Girl Codes
This Girl Codes is an exciting example of a partnership approach to STEAM that is impacting on the aspirations, confidence and skills of women and girls in rural Derbyshire.
The programme is led by Junction Arts, supported by The Foundation for Digital Creativity and links to local community and education partners.
Exploring our cultural heritage through creative challenges has already engaged a group of primary-aged girls during phase one. This next chapter builds on these successful learning outcomes and moves to The Bolsover School and intergenerational activities across community sites in the town.
The aim is to reduce digital exclusion and empower everyone taking part to believe that ‘they can’. The approach is somewhat unusual in that it takes female experiences rooted in Bolsover, both historical and contemporary, to become the focus for the future through the arts.
Taking inspiration from the original ‘Love’s Welcome to Bolsover’ in 1634, this new female centred story is being created with STEAM based activities. Community curated data points around the town and Castle collect environmental data through the ‘Internet of Curious Things’ digital element of the project.
This Girl Codes now brings alive voices from Bolsover through a visual arts project that takes the form of a new love story for the town. Data visualisation in a new storytelling format!
Margaret Cavendish
Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was a resident of Bolsover in the seventeenth century. As a poet, philosopher, writer and playwright she was confidently publishing under her own name at a time when most women writers published anonymously.
Her strong voice, achievements and legacy are at the heart of this project. The Blazing World, which she published in 1666, is one of the earliest examples of science fiction.
She was the first woman to attend a Royal Society meetup in 1667. That example in itself is shared through the introductory storytelling, as is Samuel Pepys's diary writing from that day which leads to debate and changes discussions with the groups. A scandal?
She was the second wife of William Cavendish, resided at Welbeck Abbey and was a frequent visitor to the castle.
Florence Sykes
Linking with the Bolsover Model Village, she created a rose garden for the coal miners and her annual strawberry tea events are legendary! Personalised ‘Florence’ roses are being digitally created and contain messages of hope to and for the town of Bolsover.
The roses have LEDs along their stem, and the groups are using event-driven programming techniques so to fluctuate the displays depending on live data changes. The creation of a mass of digital roses that respond to the surrounding environment will create a visual spectacle, as a new rose garden at the Castle, in September.
Activities continue to facilitate student voice with real-world environmental challenges facing the local community. In this project women and girls are sharing their findings and creative solutions to a wider audience, whilst developing a range of STEM and human skills through STEAM.
Capturing the imagination and creativity of KS3 girls is fundamental to This Girl Codes and engaging them in hands-on creative experiences receives positive feedback.
For reference, the wearable tech used is Codebug with the latest Envirosense and 'Invent Things' portal.
The second phase of This Girl Codes is led by Junction Arts and funded by the People's Lottery.
Carr Manor Community School in Leeds hosted a World Cup themed event to inspire young digital makers, linked through the Year of Engineering initiative and their season of Sport in Engineering.
As an ‘all through’ school, providing an education for children from the age of 4 to 19, their set up is fairly unique and gave opportunities for peer mentoring activities throughout the day alongside paired programming tasks.
Children from Years 5 and 6, and different schools, took part in design challenges to invent new goal line technologies for the tournament. Their focus was on improving football performance and making a difference to a team’s success.
Research centred around data-driven decision making, with global environmental comparisons using the Met Office website. Groups explored the possible effects of weather conditions on players and developed their own solutions to become a football manager’s ‘12th player on the pitch’.
A few more details about the day below, from one of the school’s digital media and liaison teachers, and taken from their internal newsletter:
"Year 5 spent the morning programming environmental sensors on Codebugs to make a humidity detector.
They were set the challenge to invent a new sport technology that would immediately sense the humidity and activate a light based on the reading. This would alert athletes that a break was required and allow them to take in fluids to ensure maximum performance.
Year 5's had a great time exploring how the Internet of Things can connect athletes and make a difference. Some of the Year 5's displayed such great work and ideas that they stayed on as mentors for a Year 6 who were visiting in the afternoon!"
Intergenerational teams gathered at Crossgates Library to explore engineering trade offs and invent fun and creative solutions relevant to them.
Creating projects with a real world relevance started with an environmental theme and ‘smart lantern’ weather stations.
From that we focused on engineering new solutions to improve people’s lives and turned our thoughts to tackling air quality problems.
Superhero activities to make the world a better place from the Nicholas Eyesight book by Sotirios Papathanasiou are a great start to understanding the science behind such environmental issues.
What's great about family events are the team challenges that evolve throughout each session. Often personal and building on previous knowledge or experiences, activities here centred around illuminating particular data streams in more complex lighting sequences.
Definitely a collaborative approach needed to code those dazzling light shows!
We always say that everyone can be an innovator, so tools from The Internet of Curious Things are there to inspire adults and children.
And that feeling when you push your project so far because you know what you want it to deliver?
And then you think it might be too ambitious?
And then you test, debug, test and see that it now runs perfectly?
That's possibly summed up by the adults celebrating their ice test above 👏
The beauty of lotus flowers to explain the science behind air quality issues
At the recent Art of Tinkering event, during Leeds Digital Festival, we created a 'Digital Peony' project and started to look at embedding smart sensors into paper craft activities. Those visualisations took temperature, humidity and light data from the workshop space and, using the Envirosense add-on with Codebug, illuminated the paper flowers with strings of LEDs.
Why flowers?
Now we’ve taken inspiration from the Japanese lotus flower, known for it’s ability to rise up from a bed of mud each morning and emerge as a flawless and beautiful bloom, to develop latest activities to help everyone understand the science behind air quality.
What's the connection with air quality?
Lotus flowers are said to be resistant to pollution and have a water-purifying function, with symbolism different across numerous cultures where it plays a role.
We’ve used them to help share messages about air quality, using their beauty to make issues visible to everyone as a floral and visual spectacle.
The event was aimed at creative and curious adults with an interest in exploring digital projects and learning more about supportive networks in the city. A chance to try out a range of digital challenges, get hands-on with new technologies and consider more ideas to inspire a new project at home.
Activities included getting started with Raspberry Pi, discovering the Wonders of Wearables, hands-on mischief with capacitive touch and solving real world problems by adding smart sensors and cameras. Each project also had an element of fun attached with a creative twist.
Using creative means to visualise environmental data led us to tinkering opportunities with this 'digital peonies' project, a take from another activity focused on improving air quality.
Always a pleasure to share the Bare Conductive story and inspire more projects through capacitive touch. We've got a Harry Potter feeling about a next collaboration in the city!
So what's next for The Art of Tinkering in Leeds?
Well feedback from the event points towards a demand for a programme of digital making activities for adults. Watch this space : )
'Totally loved it - fab for a total beginner'
'Fantastic event'
Really interesting to try all the different equipment!
'I'd love some workshops with targeted stuff to make or build'
'Digital in Manufacturing and Making' event at #LeedsDigi18
Thanks to Matthew Skelton for inviting us along, to join this ever growing digital community that will meet again in October for the Assembly Conference in Leeds.
We shared ideas with others from the manufacturing, making, and software sectors with a focus around how digital technologies and approaches to shape the future of manufacturing.
For us, our thoughts were presented towards bridging the digital skills divide in the city, and you can view the slide sets from each session below:
