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Press Releases
3 March 2004
Culture Online: Estelle Morris unveils four more projects, using new technologies to help open up the arts to the people
Arts Minister Estelle Morris today unveiled the next four projects to be commissioned under a new DCMS project to harness new technologies, enhance cultural experience and reach out to those who do not normally participate in arts and culture.
Unique projects, funded under the £13 million Culture Online programme will:
The projects - which bring the total so far announced to 11 - will mostly go live later this year.
Estelle Morris said:
"Culture Online has got off to a flying start. These projects harness cutting-edge technology to offer experiences and opportunities in the arts that, quite simply, could not have happened ten years ago.
"Culture Online opens up the arts to people and groups sometimes excluded from conventional channels. Its success so far is a tribute to the innovation and imagination of Britain's creative industries."
Jonathan Drori, Director of Culture Online, said:
"Culture Online has a team of creative specialists ensuring that projects are focused on audiences and efficiently run. The team includes commissioners, development producers and technologists enabling us to provide direction at the crucial early stages of projects and advice throughout.
"This is a very unusual way for DCMS to work but it's clearly paying off. There's already much fodder for our programme to disseminate what we and our commissioned organisations have learned - a significant communications programme will roll out soon."
(Team details are at http://www.cultureonline.gov.uk/aboutus/who.asp )
The Projects
SoundWorlds will open up new opportunities for discovering, exploring and creating music. From the project website or CD-Rom, you can navigate deep into musical worlds, stepping into the music itself to hear how it comes together, how it is inspired, is built and evolves. You can interact with real sounds and musicians, learning how to make music yourself, forging connections between different cultures and branching out into new kinds of music.
Produced by The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, it will introduce a range of new musical experiences and promote a deeper and broader appreciation of different musical genres and the relationships between them. Rich in multimedia content, the project will enable you to engage with real musicians performing fascinating musical works. You can take the elements of their performances, adapt and edit them, to make up new arrangements or totally new compositions.
During project development and dissemination the Associated Board will
also be working with musical outreach initiatives and organisations such
as The Drake Music Project to bring new experiences to otherwise hard-to-reach
or disadvantaged audiences and those who have few music-making opportunities.
Contact Lucy Newman or Mike Greenwood
City Heritage Guides
City Heritage Guides pull together accessible, inclusive and inspiring heritage content for a local, national and international audience. The Guides present up-to-date information about museums, galleries and heritage brought to life using real experiences, opinions and creative content written by city communities, museum staff and journalists.
The Guides will sit on the 24 Hour Museum website. Each Guide will be updated weekly with heritage news, reviews, listings and promotions with local museums and galleries. More in-depth content will explore three themes: By Kids for Kids, Local History and City Trails.
Partnerships have been struck with national and local organisations to
make sure featured content gets to the heart of what makes our city culture
so fascinating and varied. Featured cities will be Newcastle, Liverpool,
Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Leicester, Bristol, Norwich, Brighton and
London.
Contact Holly North or Claire Harcup
ArtisanCam
Originally announced in October 2003, ArtisanCam will pilot a series
of virtual artists residencies, linking artists and craftspeople working
in studios, schools and cultural settings with groups of people in other
locations. Websites using images, text, sound, animation, video conferencing
and live web casts will link the two groups.
Following on from projects running in the North East, Cumbria and Lancashire,
CultureOnline is pleased to announce that Bradford Arts, Heritage and
Leisure working in partnership with Education Bradford have been commissioned
to produce further pilot projects for ArtisanCam.
The first project in Bradford is now underway featuring artist Tom Wood.
Tom recently spent a number of days with the Leeds based opera company
watching rehearsals and taking digital photos in preparation for paintings
he'll do back in his studio. He also worked with a group of Year 9 students
from Challenge College in Bradford, helping them develop their sketches
of the opera characters. The students, who had participated in a workshop
given by Opera North's education team and seen the opera, later developed
their sketches into short animation films. These animations will form
part of an interactive sketchbook shown on one of the ArtisanCam websites
to be launched in the spring.
Contact Lucy Newman or Mike Greenwood
World War Two Remembered
A joint project with the BBC and Age Concern, this project will encourage older people to take advantage of new technology, by providing access and support in using computers and the internet. The project complements the ongoing work of Age Concern, and has, as its focus, the major BBC initiative commemorating the 60th anniversary of D-Day - WW2, The People's War.
Working with the recently established Museums, Libraries and Archives Councils in four Regions, the BBC and Age Concern will run a number of internet sessions with a series of linked events and appropriate support materials which will introduce people to the internet and enable them to contribute their stories to the BBC People's War website. In this way Culture Online will be encouraging more people to participate in a significant national history project as well as promoting the take up of new technology amongst an older age group.
Age Concern will also run mobile internet sessions in residential homes
and day centres giving frail or infirm people the support they require
to experience the internet and submit their stories to the People's War
website.
Contact Mike Greenwood or Paul Bason
Further details on all projects are available on the Culture Online website:
www.cultureonline.gov.uk
Notes to Editors
The First Projects
The first seven projects commissioned by Culture Online were announced
on 21 October 2003. Details can be found on the Culture Online Website
http://www.cultureonline.gov.uk/press/20031021.asp
Culture Online
The projects will be accessible in a variety of ways including via individual
organisations' websites and links to Curriculum Online (run by the Department
for Education and Skills). These projects are beginning to go live and
more will come on stream to the public over the coming year.
The overall aim of Culture Online is to use new technologies to increase
access to and participation in the arts and culture. We will bring together
cultural organisations with technical companies, design firms and outreach
providers to create projects that will delight adults and children of
all ages and backgrounds.
Culture Online is a DCMS programme with £13m allocated to Culture
Online for the commissioning of 15-30 projects before the end of 2004.
Culture Online will be delivered through cross-sectoral collaborations
between cultural and commercial organisations and will encourage people
all over the country to interact with the arts and culture in new and
more creative ways. Projects will use new technologies including Internet
(broadband and narrowband), digital TV, mobile devices, CD/DVD, and touch-screen
kiosks.
The objectives of Culture Online are to: