Weeknotes #33
This week we got together in Birmingham for the Digital Culture Awards! It was a fantastic day meeting everyone on the shortlist, catching up with the judges and celebrating the amazing stuff going on across the sector.
The awards were at Austin Court in Birmingham and livestreamed on YouTube, which you can re-watch below 👇
A special mention goes to Rose Marfleet (Project Manager) and Laura Harris (Project Co-ordinator) for organising and delivering such a great event!
The winners 🏆
The nine winning entries come from organisations and individuals who are dedicated to embedding digital technology in their work.
Using Data - Watershed
In 2020, Watershed committed to improving intersectional diversity across their staff and board, which included a promise to openly publish their demographic data. An Inclusion Data Working Group was established to develop a new approach to their staff surveys and wider inclusion work. They employed Culture Amp’s Balance and Belonging framework which moved them away from measuring against demographic benchmarks and towards understanding the intersectional identities of the people who work with them (Balance) and how those people experience working with Watershed (Belonging).
Income Generation - We The Curious
In late 2021, We The Curious set up an online shop using Shopify, enabling them to build something customisable and accessible. By taking advantage of a local authority business growth grant, they were able to bring in an external consultant to support their Marketing, Operations and Digital Teams to create a shop that reflected the charitable aims of the organisation, and provided them with a sustainable new income stream.
Image credit: Faye Hedges
Digital Transformation - DaDa
DaDa’s Holograms research and development (R&D) project aimed to improve accessibility for Deaf audiences in alternative theatre formats, such as immersive theatre, non-traditional seating arrangements, and digital theatre. These formats are historically challenging to make accessible, and the cost can be prohibitive for small arts organisations. With funding from The Space, DaDa undertook research to explore whether innovative technologies like volumetric motion capture, projection mapping, and augmented reality could make these formats accessible to Deaf audiences, and remain budget friendly.
Digital Ambassador - Julie Nicholson
The DigitalMe project was developed to give a voice to vulnerable individuals, whilst maintaining anonymity. Participants are invited to design their avatars, and write and record their stories, all to produce powerful digital artworks which describe their experience of difficult subjects such as being in care, hate crimes, domestic abuse, and mental health. The works are then used as learning resources or campaigning tools to enact real change and help others who find themselves in similar situations.
Digital Content - Dante or Die
Odds On is an interactive short film that fuses narrative, gameplay, and animation and which was created in collaboration with people with lived experiences of gambling harm across the UK. It invites the audience to play an online slot machine game, alongside the protagonist, Felicity, watching as she becomes more and more immersed in the seductive slots.
Content Creator - Roland Lane
Sonzai is an arresting Mixed Reality installation experience, featuring a photorealistic hologram dancing in the V&A Paintings Gallery. Viewed through Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 spatial computing headset, the hologram performs amongst an audio-visual environment inspired by the heightened brain stimulation and activity that dancing triggers.
Image Credit: Roland Lane
Being Social - Crab Museum
Crab Museums’ social presence uses humour and memes about crabs to address complex issues such as environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Their tongue-in-cheek approach has increased engagement and offered opportunities for honest discussion on the state of the planet, whilst creating a rare, personal relationship between online followers and the physical museum.
Digital Inclusion - Sense
Moving Portraits captures six portraits from dancers who are deafblind and/or are living with complex disabilities, who were invited to share their lived experiences through dance. The portraits were specifically designed from concept to completion to be experienced through touch, sight, and sound. The dancers were captured using cinematography, dance, audio description, SubPac technology and a specially designed sound score that translates movement into vibration. This score is split into two elements, one that reflects the movement through vibration and another that is co-designed by the dancers that reflect their portrait.
Screening at Birmingham Rep Theatre as part of B2022
Tech Champions’ Choice - LeftCoast
In the past 18 months, LeftCoast have invested in their digital development in many ways, including creating a new Digital Communications and Data Coordinator role. Since being in the role, Abigail Gillibrand has led an overhaul of their social media output, executed the launch of a new brand, and launched a new website to showcase their projects and build their legacy online, whilst also displaying the growth of their digital storytelling skills.
Meeting the old and new team
Another bonus of the day was seeing ex-Tech Champions Emma Roberts and Haydn Corrodus as judges, as well catching up with Roberta Beattie now she has rejoined the team.
We also managed to get the first picture of the 2023 Digital Culture Network team (except Sadie Abson who we’re going to photoshop in 😆),
The 2023 Digital Culture Network team