Once again The Media Workshop will be running digital photography workshops on the BBC Blast bus in Hoglands Park, Southampton on 31st July and the 1st August.

The BBC Blast Truck offers young people an opportunity to explore a variety of free workshops, surgeries and showcase events whatever their ability.

The truck houses a mobile learning studio, complete with a television studio, VT/audio editing area, digital workshop area and a separate performance space to help users create their ideas.

Industry professionals and local facilitators are on hand to offer expert advice and support.

Details go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast/ontour/

The Media Workshop worked City Reach Youth Project supporting a group of young people to create a photo mural of the people who attended the K2 events in the summer of 2006

MW were asked by Weston Youth Service to help young people in Weston design a cover for a DVD. The DVD contained a music track and film made by the Weston Youth Group and focused on the experience of those who live in the area. Young people used digital cameras to take photographs around Weston and used digital imaging techniques to create the final cover.

MW worked in collaboration with the NSPCC to help young people at the Polygon School in Southampton to develop ideas for a design for a CD cover about Children’s Rights. The CD contained songs recorded by groups of children from all over Southampton.  Participants used scanners and digital manipulation techniques to create a final design using well known road signs.

The purpose of this series of workshops was to create a fun but thought provoking activity for children in the area from many different cultural groups. Many of the groups taking part were culture-specific and made collage trees, with the idea in mind that although almost all cultures around the world have trees, each cultural group creates a different generic tree influenced by what is found near to the base of particular cultures. For instance the Greek group tree is based around a fig tree, the SASA group around a mango tree etc.

To promote thinking about how cultures can link together and have many crossovers, the children were asked to think about what they had in common with individuals from any culture – as human beings – and these thoughts were displayed on the trees.

SASA (Showing Another Side of Africa)
The group was originally created to disseminate the more positive aspects of Africa and they decided to use this opportunity to take part in a fun activity which also shows them as individuals who are proud of their cultural heritage. The resulting tree shows hand prints to represent the individuals and photographs of both the children and related adults to show a little more about who they are.

Newtown Adventure Playground
This was a group of children who visit the Adventure Playground on a drop-in basis from various cultures. They created a collage tree as one of several activities on offer.

Punjabi Language Group.
This group have created a tree which also includes writing in both English and Punjabi about what people across the world have in common. The class also created hand print leaves to represent themselves.

Greek Cultural Group
These two groups based their tree around the traditional Greek fig tree and they also wrote about commonalties among different cultures in both Greek and English using hand prints for fig leaves.

Maytree School.
Children in Year 2 created network pictures about what individuals have in common with their friends. The children took Polaroid photographs of each other, stuck them onto boards then linked the pictures with writing about what they have in common with another classmate. This was a very new concept for the children to consider.

Mount Pleasant Junior School Library Club.
Children from all years at the school attend this club but those who participated were from years 3, 4 and 5. The children took photographs using Polaroid and digital cameras and then stuck them onto trees with linking statements about what they have in common with each other, in the same way that Maytree School had done. This was completed as a fun lunch hour activity.

The Media Workshop joined with the Fairbairn Centre and Cultural Services on an SRB project to create posters on what young deaf people think of the Northam Area and also to promote Deaf Awareness. The young people used sign as well as written language to communicate their thoughts on changes to the local area and the posters are now displayed inside buses around the city.

he Media Workshop helped young people at Holyrood Youth Group make a map of their area which showed meaningful and marks, where people they know live, where they meet their friends, where they like to go etc. The map project was then followed up by a video project which the young people used to record a journey through their estate.

As part of the consultation process or the New Deal for Communities bid for Thornhill, this project set out to gather the views of young people who live on the Thornhill Estate. With the assistance of local youth workers and The Media Workshop, young people took a number of photographs and recorded comments exhibit.