Creative Generation is an intergenerational participatory audiovisual project designed by Big Bang Lab, aiming to create links between communities of residents living in Housing Estates and neighbourhoods in London. In our society we are facing a lack of human and social interaction between young people and older people.

This exciting project is an attempt to restore a sense of commonplace and a better understanding of each other’s narratives in order to build a better future. Some stories can get lost forever so archiving the conversations and interviews on video is important for the community and for future generations. This project is a combination of creative oral history with civic lead journalism using video as a tool to capture stories, travel on time to the past, to the future and maybe come up together with new solutions to old problems.

The challenge of bringing people together to share stories is minimized by the opportunities ahead to allow genuine individual and collective voices of expression to emerge. We all need the time to talk and listen to eachother’s in order to co-create alternative visions for the future beyond stereotypes, especially under challenging socio-economic circumstances and uncertain futures for all. Learning from each other’s narratives is a gift but where do we start our journey?

Tulse Hill in South London and St Martin’s Estate in particular are spaces where historically the friction between local public and private service providers has shaped the life of residents going through the ups and downs of community lead activism and the determination to have their voices heard. We work closely with High Trees Community Development Trust, an organization providing adult learning opportunities and ongoing service to the wider community. One of the sucessful stories of the neighbourhood.

Let’s explore our collective wisdom!

To know more about it check our microsite   www.creative-generation.org.uk

In partnership with Dreamstake we have been running monthly events at Club Workspace in Clerkenwell since last August. BIG BANG NIGHTS are networking events using films to trigger open discussions or crowdversations, an open platform to enable collective, constructive and meaningful discussions. In the case of BIG BANG NIGHTS the overall theme is culture, creativity and innovation for social change. For each night we launch a topic based on the issue that the film is touching. Our role as curators and facilitators is making sure that the content is exciting and challenging enough for people to join us in.

Crowdversation 1: Creative Communities
Crowdversation 2: Arts and Health
Crowdversation 3: Culture, conflict resolution (West-Eastern Divan Orchestra)
Crowdversation 4: Older people and financial inclusion
Crowdversation 5: Corporate Memory and urban futures
Crowdversation 6: Co-creativity and collaboration (BOW workshop)

The crowdversations start from the issues on the film and then we move swiftly to new territories depending on the contribution of each individual with questions and opinions recorded live on camera shot by any person next to the speaker in the crowd. It is not a Q&A as we know it or a panel discussion. It is a many to many conversation.

The event finishes with drinks where people have the chance to interact at another level but already in tune with others as we promote active participation during the discussions. It works because it is niche and small, worthwhile chit chats that can lead to new personal and business relationships.  We are also experiementing with new ways of integrating online media with the offline experience as a full circle before and after the event.

We have launched a LinkedIn group open to anyone interested in the big theme. You can join here www.culturalsocialresponsibility.org We also encourage for the events the participation via twitter using the hashtag bigbangnight to enable a level of interaction with anyone willing to put forward any question or remark before the event.

On Monday the 19th we celebrated the first series of BIG BANG NIGHTS with a tester of our flagship programme of co-creativity in action, the Balloon Orchestra Workshop and had a crowdversation on creativity and collaboration with the participants after their amazing performance.The winning team was the Fab Five with their piece tidal waves. Check out our audio channel on soundcloud. It was the best way to say thanks to all who has supported us during 2011 and celebrate the new year with excitement!

Read this blog post about it written by our unconditional fan Ben Goldsmith from Workspace Group.

Balloon Orchestra Workshop (4) Tidal waves / winner! by Big Bang Lab audio

This new venture is combining the social media platform of the spoken word,  AudioBoo with a wiki platform  to engage people all over the world with our flagship project  and cultural social responsibility programme, Global City Symphony. We are inviting to get contributors to a wiki open to individuals that speak more than one language to translate the texts, upload an audiofile using  their voice in order to create a series of multilingual messages.

More important for us is the opportunity for us to allow people to engage and contribute to this collective effort and become local and global ambassadors of Global City Symphony. We are looking for individuals interested in social change in the context of the city and the role of culture to bring the city alive and change the approach to tackle other aspects neglected in the development or urban planning agenda. We are confident people will connect with the vision and mission of the project using language skills by translating content to another language, but also taking ownership of the project to engage with and become future volunteer ambassadors.

visit us now!

Multilingual Ambassadors   http://multilingual-ambassadors.wikispaces.com

A Big Bang Lab production for Canary Wharf Film Festival 2009. Project featured on ITV London news.

ʻListen: A Soundtrack of Shared Memoriesʼ was developed to provide a learning exchange between  communities, laying down a foundation for engagement and heritage participation. Playing on the  themes of picture, sound, and memories, the group has worked together to record oral histories,  understand sound editing and create a living soundtrack to silent film from the extensive PLA archive. 

At the Nearby screening you can see the finished product and indulge in an open discussion about it with the group. The Port of London Authority work in partnership with commercial, recreational, community and amenity groups and organisations to ensure the Thames continues to be a safe and enjoyable environment for trade, recreation and tourism. The Museum Of London Archives contains an outstanding collection of material relating to PLA.

Big Bang Lab, is a leading cultural-social enterprise working across film, music and heritage, designing and delivering dynamic creative learning programmes. Leaders in the creative use of  corporate archives, they connect companies and communities by linking CSR with Heritage.

Listen, a soundtrack of shared memories

Nearby: East End Docks Programme Listen: A Soundtrack of Shared Memories Friday 4th September, 1200 – 13.30  Free screening and Q&A Museum of London Docklands, Wilbeforce Theatre 

To book a free place for the screening and event programme, click here
For more information about the Canary Wharf Film Festival visit  http://www.cwff.org.uk
To download the flyer click here

Continuing with the line of work of Big Bang Lab in the creative use of film archives, this two day project will help a group of old and young participants to interact with each other in order to bring the memories back and contribute with their stories and dreams to a new dimension of the Docklands of the past, present and future.

The group of retired members of PLA will share their passion  and their knowledge of the river and life. Their narratives are going to be recorded and use them on day 2 as the base to create a new soundtrack to City of Ships, one of the films  from  the PLA archives.

Listen is a project beyond oral history, as the narratives are used in a experimental way, creating new work out of old assets and putting forward the positive  contribution of old generations in a two way process. This intergenerational project aims to  bring  a hidden heritage alive and making it relevant to new audiences

By using the film without its original soundtrack and adding a new one that has been created together in a studio, not only skills and knowledge has been transferred but also a new dimension to heritage as a living legacy in present time. Corporate archives are used in a community environment and Big Bang Lab has created a platform for debate and discussion, a learning programme for the Film Festival hosted by the Museum of London Docklands.

The final screening will take place this Friday the 4th. The programme includes other iconic films that have used real-life soundtracks and innovative use of sound on film to finish with  the presentation of the outcome of this project, City of Ships with the new soundtrack followed by a Q&A session with the participants.

Listen: A Soundtrack of Shared Memories’ was developed to provide a learning exchange between communities, laying down a foundation for engagement and heritage participation. Playing on the themes of picture, sound, and memories, the group has worked together to record oral histories, understand sound editing and create a living soundtrack to silent film from the extensive PLA archive.  At the Nearby screening you can see the finished product and indulge in an open discussion about it with the group.

DAY 1 -Recording day, Thames Clipper boat ride and creative writing
DAY 2 – Editing Sound to picture, creating the soundtrack
DAY 3 – Screening and Q&A – Canary Wharf Film Festival – Museum of London Docklands

We are very pleased to have found another hidden gem in London, a great  online resource of audio files (under creative commons license) representing the soundscape of the city in the present and in the past. We used some of the files available on  http://www.soundsurvey.org.uk

This is an example of project based creative learning model developed by Big Bang Lab using music and film archives.

A creative learning project model using film archives and music

Created by Sergio López Figueroa in partnership with Brent Council and delivered by Big Bang Lab, Unseen Voices is an interdisciplinary outreach project aiming to engage young people and the community through creative participatory practice using film archives, photographs and live original music.  This is a an example of a project that creates new learning and outreach opportunities outside the boundaries of the school. [... read more]

INVITATION TO A JOURNEY One-day interactive music workshops and live performance of original music for silent films with Delta Saxophone Quartet took place at the ICA to celebrate the launch of the Cultural Olympiad. The event included a tester of the new music produced by Big Bang Lab in conjunction with the Delta Saxophone Quartet for a Tom & Jerry’s early animated cartoon and  for he film Invitation au Voyage by Germaine Dulac. [... read more ]