Photo: Alex Nicholls, boomsatsuma
On Tuesday 27th and Wednesday 28th November, Engine Shed hosted a variety of events for people looking to update their skills or enter the digital sector, as part of Digital Cities Bristol.
Digital Cities is a partnership event with the BBC and external partners. There are a number of events taking place across Bristol from Monday 26 to Friday 30 November.
On Tuesday, video platform Sauce kicked things off with a workshop on the uses of smartphone videos in digital marketing. The session explored tips and tricks for filming on your phone, shared essential insights for video making, and offered the chance to demo different smartphone accessories to take your films to the next level.
In the afternoon, Coral Manton, lecturer in creative computing at Bath Spa University, hosted an algorave workshop in association with the Jean Golding Institute at the University of Bristol, teaching the live-coding of music and visualisations using open-source software. Algoraves, which have become a global club phenomenon in recent years, are an engaging way of teaching coding and showcasing its wide-ranging real-world applications to young people.
IBM hosted a hands-on workshop on data innovation, exploring the functions and uses of the technologies required for machine learning and AI. Aimed at developers interested in the use of AI in their own applications, the workshop looked at product design, chatbots, and visual recognition programmes.
Finally, boomsatusma closed the day with an ‘Ask Me Anything’ event for 14-18 year olds looking to network with creative sector professionals. Representatives from games, music, film, TV production and other digital industries shared some of their top insights and skills required for young people to access similar careers in the future. Over 70 young people attended and 16 professionals supported the event.
On Wednesday 28th November, Engine Shed hosted the BBC Young Reporter for 35 young people from two schools and one youth organisation in the West of England. The aim of the day was to inspire them and offer the opportunity to learn new skills, find out more about digital innovation and careers in the media, and to learn about the importance of real news, and identifying what is false and what is accurate.
The day included a workshop run by Engine Shed tenant, TechSPARK. In the workshop, students created a social media campaign using Scale Up Generator case studies, which introduced them to the challenges of local fast growth businesses, Zeetta Networks, Ultrahaptics, Mayden Academy, Huggg, Disrupt Sports, and Techmodal.
Lorraine Fairbanks, Partnerships Manager for Engine Shed said:
“Digital Cities Bristol is a fantastic opportunity for anyone to update their skills and find out more about the digital, tech, and creative industries. We have hosted a day of events here for the past few years and always find it brings new people into Engine Shed who may not know that they have access to the space.
“The Young Reporter event gives us more opportunities to connect young people with the exciting projects that happen at Engine Shed, and to promote the work of the BBC for its Young Reporter programme.”
Engine Shed is committed to supporting inclusive and sustainable economic growth, in part by inspiring young people around careers in the digital, tech, low carbon, and creative sectors. Our Diverse Workforce for the Future project engages students in workshops and events focused on developing the skills needed to access these industries, where adults from diverse backgrounds are currently under represented. For more information on our work to stimulate our future workforce, and highlight the importance of a diverse talent pool, visit our website.