Another Successful Year at MozFest 2017!

Digital practitioners and organisations from across the world came together and took over Ravensbourne College, at MozFest 2017 between 27-29 October. It was an incredibly packed and exciting few days, with a huge amount of creative digital activity to engage, stimulate and inspire people of all ages. MozFest brought the most exciting developments in technology and culture and explored how the two intertwine with one another. The whole event was underpinned by the advocacy of open Internet movement. This year Arts Award teamed up with Voice and Upstart Projects to develop creative workshops for children & young people in the Youth Led Track, providing them the opportunity to work towards an Arts Award. This included workshops led by young people who themselves were working towards a Gold award and used these as part of their Unit 2 leadership.

Our youth network was represented by artist in residence, Gold achiever Sally. Sally delivered ‘Unmasking your Online reality’ workshops whereby participants created their own masks and collectively produced a virtual gallery.

Silver achiever Shelby, along with Sarah from See, Think, Make, looked at ‘Digital Creativity in Primary Schools’. They delivered workshops on using green screens and digital music making, helping to engage Primary schools with their computer and coding curriculum. The sessions helped to develop straightforward, accessible ideas which you can easily map to Arts Award Discover and Explore.

Hannah, a young person from Work in Progress, delivered her first workshop on ‘Do we live in a world where inclusion is for all?’. Hannah screened a short film she had created, questioning inclusivity and sharing her personal story. This led to discussions and debates about what inclusivity means and what our future could look like.

A Little Learning offered a Scratch-based HTML Explorer workshop, with four bright, articulate and creative young people aged between 8-11yrs old presenting how to build a website. Aside from delivering the session, they also supported participants to understand the different processes involved. A great way to learn from children and be inspired by their digital tech knowledge!

Helix Arts also joined us for the weekend and looked at Social Media & Expression. Two of their young people delivered the workshop, Gold achiever Katie along with Sophie.

There were so many other activities, including:

• Dance Code where the link between dance and technology was explored by Neha, another young person currently working on Gold
• Introductions to Code Club, who were also at the festival.
• The Micro:bit Robot Challenge.
• An opportunity to build your own Pokemon world in web-based virtual reality. Check out Santosh’s blog on how he felt about delivering his dream session at the festival!

We will be producing some case studies and resources to use and adapt for your own practice so watch this space! In the meantime, Arts Award have put together a brand new digital resource to support advisers when working with their young people. We have selected just a few of the many digital platforms available to help you along the way, but if you have any further ideas or would like to share other digital evidencing techniques then please get in touch with our digital associate, Judy McFall.

Our next exciting MozFest fringe event is happening on Friday 17 November at Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre in London where 150 pupils from across 9 different Primary schools will come together for MozEd. Each pupil will have a bespoke designed Discover template to complete throughout the day, as they take part in a variety of digital workshops and meet creative digital practitioners, with an opportunity to share their experiences at the end of the day. We will share our resources from the day soon for advisers which can help support digital workshops delivered in schools or other settings with children & young people.

If you missed MozFest 2017 you can find some amazing images on Flickr, courtesy of Mozilla.

Continue to share your interest or experience with the world on Twitter using #mozfest, plus all of the Dialogues and Debates are online to watch on demand.

For further information about Mozilla and the festival go to mozillafestival.org where you can find information about the speakers and projects from both this year and 2016.

Check out @AAonVoice and @ArtsAward to keep up to date with our digital activity.