BadgeLab Leeds
BadgeLab Leeds Has Launched!
DigitalME joined ArtForms Leeds, Sheffield Hallam University and a diverse range of arts practitioners to create badges and launch BadgeLab Leeds at our Open Badges design day on Thursday, 18 September. BadgeLab Leeds is an arts engagement and research project supported by the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts — Nesta, Arts Council England and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
A diverse range of arts practitioners and organizations joined us to spend the day helping each other think through the creation of badges for making clay pots, designing physical and virtual robots, building dens and other creative activities. Some badges will be for in-school activities, some will be for taking part in more casual, creative events around Leeds and others will be for young people who are working toward the Arts Award.
This badge development day marked the launch of an engagement and research project. The project partners are ArtForms Leeds (creative practice), DigitalME (technology) and Sheffield Hallam University (research). Our participating arts practitioners include First Floor (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Playful Leeds, Boffin Projects, Studio 12 and The Den Experiment. We are thrilled to be working with such a wide-ranging group of creative practitioners and we are keen to see what story the research findings will tell.
The central goal of the research will be to explore whether Open Badges can increase engagement with the arts amongst young people aged 7 to 25. We think badges may well be capable of broadening and diversifying arts engagement across this age group and the research will test this theory. The research portion of the project is led by Andrew Dearden (Sheffield Hallam University). His team will use surveys, interviews and other methods to acquire data about the role badges play in the activities sponsored by this project.
What Did We Do?
Designing badges with DigitalME nearly always starts with some concentrated work on DigitalME’s badge canvas. This map helps our clients and partners think through the practicality of creating and issuing badges. At our design day on Thursday, participants thought through who would be earning their badges, in what context they would do so and why they would want to earn that particular badge. We emphasise that badges need to have some practical value in order to maintain the earner’s interest, hence the focus on the value proposition in our badge canvas. Participants also workshopped their ideas about which activities were suitable for a badge, what the criteria for awarding a badge should be as well as the question of who and how badges would be awarded.
We also did some on the spot filming to help promote the badges created on the day and to serve as instructions for young people who may want to complete a badge remotely. We asked our attendees to tell us in 30 seconds what their badge required and how to do the creative activity. We also asked them for some thoughts about their experiences on the day, which we were pleased to find were all very positive! Most importantly though, when asked what they hoped young people would think of their badge, all of our practitioners came up with enthusiastic assertions that they wanted young people to be excited, interested, inspired and challenged by their badge activities. To get more of a sense of what the results of our workshops can be, take a look at Sam Paechter’s Badge Mission video for clay pots.
What Conclusions Did We Come to?
We acquired some fantastic video footage from our participating arts practitioners and organisations. We also saw a number of badges designed on the day. Stephen Reid of Playful Leeds will be offering badges for a variety of minecraft and robot designing related activities, both within this project and beyond. Chris Harman will be awarding badges for den building and Sam Paechter of Boffin Projects will be offering badges for creating thumb pots. Both will largely be awarded during organised school activities. Bee Skivington and Maria Thelwell worked through their ideas for badges for young people with learning disabilities, who may not have any traditional qualifications earned through school. This project especially seemed an inspiring use of open badges and could offer a smaller set of bit sized projects to work through on the path to earning the Arts Award.
In addition, working through the badge canvas, especially in a workshop setting, can bring a number of practical and theoretical issues to the fore. Some of our participants found that many of their activities required badge awarding to take place on the spot immediately following the activity. This was because many of the arts practitioners involved brought unique skills and approaches to their work with young people, which they felt could not be replicated with videos or additional staff assessing the work. Others wanted to see their badges fulfil either a remote or a more casual learning agenda. These paths require a different type of assessment and award process. We concluded that there was no one-size-fits-all solution for assessing and awarding badges. A variety of options would be necessary, especially given the diversity of arts represented and activities on offer.
Take a look at some of our practitioners conclusions about the day in this clip of our post-design day interviews.
Where Can I Access BadgeLab Leeds Badges?
Some of the badges workshopped are already nearly ready. These will be hosted in a new arts badge library on Makewav.es for under 13s and badges for young people aged 13 to 25 will be hosted on a new platform. Badges will also be available via arts partner websites. Some of the badges are still in discussion and will be progressed as part of our funded project, which runs until March 2015. We invite teachers, educators and arts practitioners to have a look at the badges on both these platforms and we will be making announcements when they become available.
From 3 October, the first badges associated with BadgeLab Leeds are available here as part of the Light Night Leeds event.
Supported by the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts — Nesta, Arts & Humanities Research Council and public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
About the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts
The Digital R&D fund for the Arts is a £7 million fund to support collaboration between organisations with arts projects, technology providers, and researchers. It is a partnership between Arts Council England, Arts and Humanities Research Council and Nesta.
We want to see projects that use digital technology to enhance audience reach and/or develop new business models for the arts sector. With a dedicated researcher or research team as part of the three-way collaboration, learning from the project can be captured and disseminated to the wider arts sector.
Every project needs to identify a particular question or problem that can be tested. Importantly this question needs to generate knowledge for other arts organisations that they can apply to their own digital strategies.
