JamesKinloch556

Digital technologies, in particular video and web 2.0 are massively popular. The sad thing is though the youths are aware of this not enough attention is given to them from the pre-internet crowd. Though new media is one area that I love, I am very much interested as to how these can be produced in a way that is easy for the masses to use and understand. What I mean by this is the way in which anyone can use and learn from video, online media and more importantly, share newly gained skills and knowledge with the right audience. My work with HybridLab, Ford and others has further enhanced my enthusiasm regarding the practicalities of resources and how/what it is possible to do in the work place. With HybridLab a key aspect was working with bands and local people in central and Greater London to ensure that they had a huge say in the content that was provided. This is about working with organisations such as the European Social Fund; it’s also about merging the areas of communication with the ESF Learning Skills Council (LSC) and making them work amongst the target audiences. It means that the grammar used with the content, the images and so on all have to be relevant (and ultra stimulating) to the youths that are being looked at. Also, enabling the audience to be part of a citizen journalism side of things gives the project and the user’s great confidence in many, many ways. The type of approach used and respect for the people I have made site visits rocket from under 200 visitors per month to over 20,000 six months later. This was done with a small budget, just bags of ideas and innovative usage of the new media that was available to us. Specifically I used a approach that I called ‘one website for each artist.’ This approach then attracted the likes of Ford and ITVLocal and really gave the project (and my creative team) such pride. With ITVLocal we were able to showcase our work though their brand. The work would be the videos that were produced from the WHAM project. With Ford the great pictures that we took of artists were seen by them and so used in one of their European campaigns.