Celebrating Leeds’s Creativity: Open Badges at March of the Robots and Beyond
The March of the Robots Parade and Minecraft Party were the grand finale of the Playful Leeds March of the Robots project. Having provided the technology for the badged activities for March of the Robots, DigitalMe could hardly miss the finale! We have worked closely with Emma Bearman, Chief Roboteer at Playful Leeds, throughout the lead up to the finale weekend of 25/26 October so it is not without a slight sense of sadness that we close the door on this project.
There is plenty to celebrate, however! We saw people coming out to make robots in droves. Hundreds of people came to Leeds city centre to see a Wifi powered Dalek, take part in chocolate robot making workshops and visit the Advanced Centre for Robotics at the University of Leeds. Many were themselves transformed into robots by professional make-up artists and everyone was welcome to dance along with a number of professional dancers in a robotics-inspired group dance.
March of the Robots offered much more than a single weekend of activities, however. This year long, Leeds-based social enterprise initiative aimed to unite the largest number of people possible in a range of creative activities. Playful Leeds has offered over 70 free workshops at various locations around the city in the lead up to the March of the Robots finale. Perhaps the most recognizable of these workshops were Stephen Reid’s Minecraft robot making activities hosted within a shipping container that toured different locations around the city over the weeks leading up to the final parade and party weekend.
Open Badges at March of the Robots
DigitalMe’s role in the project involved working alongside the MOTR team to develop badges to recognize robot making activities. Glowing Cubebot kits were created with an in built digital badge claim code; 400 of these were made on Light Night and badges can still be claimed on the Makewaves website, the platform where all the March of the Robots badges are hosted.
At the March of the Robots finale, the Cubebot kits could be found at 10 different venues across the city as part of a Cubebot trail. When participants spotted a cubebot, they were rewarded with a kit, complete with instructions for earning and claiming a digital badge for taking part in the activity. The Minecraft Maker Party at Leeds Museum, which was attended by around 600 people over Saturday and Sunday, offered two activities to earn digital badges.
One involved creating a patch for the Flashing Roboquilt — a collaborative textile project made using conductive thread and LEDs — which now includes around 100 patches made by people of all ages over the past 9 months. The other badged activity was a highlight of the Minecraft Party for many, as it involved designing a robot in Minecraft which was then printed using a 3D printer. Well known Minecraft vloggers Netty Plays and Tomohawk attended the event to help young people complete the activities, and to sign lots of autographs!
The March of the Robots celebration extended beyond Leeds too. There were simultaneous badging activities in dedicated robot-making section of DigitalMe’s Open Badges Lab at MozFest in London. Children, young people and adults made Mincraft, Bare Conductive and Cube robots for the same badges that were issued at the March of the Robots.
Beyond March of the Robots
Thought it may come as a surprise, there are serious goals amidst all of this play — in the shape of the arts engagement and research project, BadgeLab Leeds. The success of the March of the Robots badges as well as a range of other arts badges is being tested within a range of contexts by researchers from Sheffield Hallam University, who are working alongside DigitalMe and Artforms Leeds in the BadgeLab Leeds project. BadgeLab Leeds will assess whether digital badges can deepen and diversify engagement in the arts.
In addition to testing badging at large scale events like March of the Robots, digital badges are also being tested in schools and through programmes for young people not in education, employment or training. BadgeLab Leeds will assess whether digital badges can deepen and diversify engagement in the arts.
Although March of the Robots has come to an end, the digital badges strand continues, with artists delivering the Flashing Roboquilt and a Robot Room Guard activity — using a shrimp computer and motion sensors to build a mini room guard — into schools in Leeds over the coming month. Buzz First Floor, a West Yorkshire Playhouse initiative, which works with young people with learning disabilities, will be offering drama badges to its participants.
Young people can also continue to engage online by earning digital badges remotely for creating various types of robots with arts practitioners from Playful Leeds, building dens with The Den Experiment and making clay pots with Boffin Projects. Details and badges are available on the BadgeLab Leeds website.
The larger goals of BadgeLab Leeds are to create new learning pathways for children and young people both within the classroom environment and outside it; to develop a connected learning model recognised amongst artists, cultural organisations and employers; and to open up new opportunities for learning across the city, which can be publicised and replicated elsewhere. We would love to see a future of city-based, badged learning projects that can provide positive change as well as opportunities for people to learn about creative activities that interest them.
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
