1st February 2012
Make It Digital
This week Sea appeared on BBC Radio Cornwall talking about young people in Cornwall not in education, employment or training. Kathryn, co-director of Sea was interviewed by James Churchfield during the breakfast show in regards to a new project called Make It Digital.
Listen to the BBC Radio Cornwall Interview
{mp3 files/audio/Neets_Interview.mp3}
Duration: 6 minutes
Make It Digital is a new digital enterprise programme for young people who are not in education, employment or training and are not sure what to do next.
Sea Communications have designed a creative four week programme which will teach students essential digital skills and help them think differently about planning their future.
Working in collaboration with Sea, students will make a film exploring the subject 'choices for young people' through their eyes. They will learn filmmaking techniques including scripting, storyboarding and how to use basic editing tools. Their films will be shown at a special event for local government, businesses and the wider community.
During the course, all students will receive one to one mentoring from Junction 24, a specialist youth recruitment consultancy who will work with students to understand their skills, strengths, help them put together an action plan and find real work opportunities after the course.
Students will also have the opportunity to apply for an internship with Sea Communications after the course finishes if they are interested in learning more about working in design and media.
Kathryn from Sea explains the idea behind designing this course:
"The internet has revolutionised the way people communicate with each other, find information and create employment opportunties.
As an independent design business working in digital communications, we are in a good position to offer advice and guidance to young people making the transition from school to employment. Most teenagers are already using social networking sites such as Facebook to connect with friends but how many understand the value of their digital skills in employment and education?
Our aim is to help young people uncover relevant skills, provide them with inspiration and connect them with relevant employment or training opportunities.
The course will enable students to express themselves creatively and uncover new skills and interests in a non traditional classroom setting. We plan to make it as fun as possible, whilst at the same time teaching practical skills that can be added to a CV and help them find a future job.
Our collaborative approach means that we can take the course to small groups of teenagers in their community youth group, arrange visits to our design studio and use mobile technology to film and teach wherever they feel most comfortable."
The first course starts on 5th March. Please contact Kathryn or Phil for more information or to sign up!
Click to view to MAKE IT DIGITAL leaflet
14th November 2011
Sea project nominated for a UK Public Sector Digital award
We're so pleased that our project The Big Design Challenge has been shortlisted as a finalist at this years UK Public Sector Digital Awards in the Best Example of Citizen Engagement category.
The Big Design Challenge was a Dott Cornwall project sponsored by the Technology Strategy Board. The aim was to empower people across Cornwall to address some of the biggest challenges facing their communities and support them to do so with information, design and business mentoring.
We created a crowdsourcing website which encouraged people to come forward with the challenges that mattered most to them and have ideas for solving them. The platform enables individuals and community groups to share ideas and collaborate with each other.
The project also used other communications such as text messaging, social media and community outreach events and activities to make sure as many people as possible could participate. A prize fund was offered to community groups who could successfully collaborate and turn their ideas into sustainable solutions.
During the three months since the project launched in November 2010, the website saw 90 challenges and 180 ideas submitted. It was successful in building trust between citizens with regular discussion took place via the website and associated social media channels. The @bigcornwall twitter gathered a following of 1,000 plus followers.
Mapping tools enable users to tag a challenge or an idea to a specific location.
Dott programme director Andrea Siodmok said: "When you want to create a big revolution it often starts with small changes. We wanted to empower people to come forward with good ideas, whether it's someone in the street or Cornwall Council's chief executive, and begin to make the small changes that can have a real impact. The world is changing so let's seize the opportunity. It was fascinating to see how the big design challenge evolved and moved forward in ways which we could not predict."
The project successfully encouraged hundreds of people set community challenges and come forward with good ideas for solving them. Kick starter funding was awarded to three community groups who succesfully collaborated to turn their ideas into sustainable community enterprises.
Matt Barton - Assistant Head of Strategy and Communications at Cornwall Council said "Building on the success of the Big Design Challenge, Cornwall Council is now developing the digital platform as part of the NESTA Creative Councils programme. Sea Communications is helping us to develop a strategy for the project which will use digital tools to support enterprising people with whatever they need to make change happen in their community"
http://www.twitter.com/bigcornwall
Technical features of the website:
- Categorisation & filtering of challenges and ideas relating to five different themes spanning social, economic and environmental issues
- Simple log in functionality using existing social media log ins such as facebook and twitter
- Tag clouds to enable quick search
- Ability to plot location of challenges & ideas on Google map
- Ability for visitors to add images and video to challenges
- Automated twitter functionality (challenges & ideas get tweeted when added)
- Automated charity fundraising pot linked to challenges and ideas
- Films depicting the hidden challenges that lie beneath the beauty of Cornwall
7th October 2011
Sea shortlisted to pitch ideas for Living well with dementia
The Sea team were delighted to learn this morning that we are one of the fifteen shortlisted teams for the Design Councils "Living Well With Dementia" bid. After working intensely throughout September to understand our approach, it's a wonderful achievement to have been selected from the many bids that the Design Council received.
The first stage involved us drawing together a team that had the skills, experience and passion to develop and make our ideas happen. They consisted of Volunteer Cornwall, Age UK Cornwall, Arts for Health, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Primary Care Trust and Cornwall Council. We also included the Alzheimer's Society as our associates alongside the recently formed European Centre for Environment and Human Health, based at the Knowledge Spa, Treliske.
We also worked very closely with Senior Design Producer Edward Rowe's father, Alan Rowe, who is responsible for the welfare of his father (Ed's grandad), Bob Rowe. Bob, who is living with dementia now resides at the Trevarna Home in St. Austell where his needs are well cared for. The journey that the Rowe family have been on helped the Sea team understand in great detail where the issues and problems facing people living with dementia and their carers currently are.
The Rowe families' dementia journey ultimately shaped our idea. Please watch our video of Alan whose insights are honest and thought provoking.
The next stage involves us working closely with our partners to develop the idea further before presenting to the Design Council on the 9th of November.
Listen to BBC Radio Cornwall Report
Links
Department for Health Dementia Strategy
5th September 2011
Sea win Stop The Traffik pitch
We are delighted to be working with international charity Stop The Traffik on the development of a unique global crowdsourcing website to encourage activism against human trafficking and help them create a global movement.
STT is a growing global movement of individuals, communities and organisations fighting to prevent the sale of people, protect the trafficked and prosecute the traffickers.
Trafficking is a growing problem and between two to four million men, women and children are trafficked across borders and within their own country every year. It's quite shocking to think that the trade earns twice as much worldwide revenue as Coca Cola, and so the opportunity to help is something that we're all keen to do.
Sea and Stop The Traffik share a vision for creating a global online platform that is driven by community-based activism.
We will design a website which will use our online crowdsourcing technology and mapping tools to enable individuals and community groups to come together, collaboratively solve challenges associated with human trafficking, report incidents and share information.
The charity, which has more than 1000 member organisations in 50 countries and tens of thousands of activists all over the world, hope the website will help in spreading the message. Bex Keer, Stop The Traffik's UK Manager, said: "We're really excited to be working with Sea Communications.
"Their technology is all about empowering, connecting and networking communities with their own ideas and solutions. This really matches our ethos in equipping and enabling communities."
"We knew we wanted to do this, but we didn't know how to achieve this online and having found Sea Communications (it) really delighted and excited us. I think we're going to pioneer something quite new in our combat to conquer trafficking."
For more information on Stop The Traffik please visit http://www.stopthetraffik.org
10th June 2011
Big Design Challenge scoops Media & Innovation Award
"Whatever we may feel about Cameron's "Big Society" the Big Design Challenge offers an innovative platform for engaging the local community."
- MIA Judging Panel
The award was for the Big Design Challenge website which enabled local people and communities to submit ideas of their own challenges and find solutions to those challenges. You can read a more in depth article about the project here.
We are making a short book about the project which will be available online soon. If you would like to be notified about this you can sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page.
