Create Our Future- Combining digital with IRL experiences

 I've recently been invited to share the story of Create Our Future with The RSA as part of their Digital Services project. The staff team are keen to capture success stories from Fellows. These are stories of occasions when digital services have supported Fellows to share and build on their ideas. 

In the spirit of our creative and 'can do' approach to this project I set myself the task of creating a short video to sum up the project. I was asked to provide a quick, 1 minute video so I had a play on iMovie and this is what I came up with!

There is a lot more that I could say about how we have used digital services to progress this project. The initial idea came to me in response to the Covid pandemic, during the first UK lockdown. Every moment of this project has been experienced online and the team of Fellows and RSA staff have never met face to face. Below I've quickly jotted down all the services we've used so far (I wonder if I've forgotten any!)

I found it interesting to reflect on how integral digital is to this project. We intend for the experiences that the artist's create to be delivered in a digital format. That could be in an audio file, or a youtube video or perhaps a written document. The first experience that the participants will have will come about through some form of digital service. Then comes the exciting part! We move to an IRL experience. The digital input will guide participants to create real world artwork. The experience will transition from the digital realm to the physical one. Exciting!

Interestingly the next stage could move back to digital or stay in the physical world...or perhaps include both! Participants are encouraged to display their work, in their homes, in their community spaces or online. A connection can be created by individuals using the artwork to spark F2F conversation, or communities can choose to participate and then share their artwork IRL to build the personal experience into a shared one. In the digital realm an 'online gallery' will be created through the use of a #createOurFuture. Using this participants will be able to connect with others and build links through a shared experience, regardless of location.

There is so much to gain from designing a project which moves seamlessly between IRL experiences and the digital realm! ✨💻🎨

For a recent update of the project check out this post

Here's my list:

Wazuku, Mail, Zoom, Slack, Miro, Youtube, Blogger, PowerPoint, Word, Numbers, Pages, Arts Council grantium, dropbox...maybe a couple more!