The Digital Villages Research Network

Click here to see the plan

There can be no doubt that the East Cleveland Image Archive housed at Loftus Library will play a big part in the “Iron Age to Digital Age” exhibition. The diagram below shows how images are panning out with regard to East Cleveland Villages. We think that we will place images geographically around the 8 screens. I have edited the obvious ones first andt here are another 938 still to be placed into a location.

A large group of Digital Photgraphers were seen wandering Loftus today. Cllr Barry Hunt had organised a visit to the Town Hall and thanks also  go to Alison, Clerk to Loftus Town Council for showing us around.  Barry features on these walls in both name and image. Our intrepid group are pictured below in the Council Chamber. We then took to the streets of Loftus. What a fabulous place, I’ve visited many times and driven through even more but you see so much more on a walkabout. This visit was accompanied by a rich tapestry of local stories from John including the one about the famous Race between a Camel and a Lion. The pictures will end up as digital post cards as well as featuring in the Iron Age To Digital Age exhibition to take place in Loftus Town Hall in September.

 

What have Middlesbrough Music Live and Loftus Library got in common? Four rubber blocks that’s what. Thanks to Martie at Music Live I took  charge of 4 rubber blocks and shipped them down to Lofus calling on Mr Motivator, Barry Hunt to help offload. They’re now sitting under John the librarians desk so when he gets back off holiday he will be delighted. These blocks will form the basis of the Octorama soon to be built in the Mayor of Loftus’s Barn and if these work out we’ll need another 12. Interestingly, I found out after shipping these all the way from Middlesbrough that Skinningrove already have a supply!

I had a blast today. I headed out to Whitby which is always a good trip. The purpose was to facilitate a multi media reporting blog for Whitby Community College and their feeder schools. http://www.whitbyschoolstransfer.co.uk Groovy URL huh? – the kids chose it.

For reasons that I’ll not go into now I found myself with a People Carrier on hire. I therefore sent messages out on my networks asking if anyone wanted a trip to Whitby. I got three takers, Trevor who is a Poet and on work experience to my projects. Susan, part of my Wednesday Community Media Club at Destinations in Saltburn. Susan spends a lot of time looking after her 100 yr old mother and has recently got into digital photography in a big way. Finally John a local historian from Loftus.

None of these guys knew each other so we had a round of introductions in the “Whitby Shuttle”. Trevor will be documenting this trip as well as evaluating the various mechanisms available for “Digital Visits”. I’ll let you know when he blogs the story warts and all.

With two local history buffs in the car it was sure to get interesting in a watching paint dry way. It transpired that the guy who wrote the Biggles books is from Marske where we had a recent digital visit. Now, apparently this guy who wrote about an ace pilot was actually a crap pilot himself. For some reason this group dubbed me “Biggles” which may refer to my driving skills.

I dropped them in Whitby centre and then went off to do my gig whilst they did theirs.

On the way back we called at Loftus Library home of the fabulous East Cleveland Image Archive and discussed some stuff including an open evening at the library for June 24th, all welcome.

We’ve watched the rise and rise of Facebook until it has become a ubiquitous giant. Maybe it’s got too big and all consuming and many people are complaining about control and privacy issues. Has the time come for a Facebook Fail?  This interesting article has a take on that very issue:  http://ht.ly/1IKEP

We had an excellent visit to the Mining Museum in Skinningrove this week and we’d like to thank CIMM for their hospitality. Particularly we’d like to mention the three volunteers Alan, Liz and Ian who took us through various parts of the mine and told us of the working and the history. We had a pretty large group on this visit with Friends of Redcar Cemetery joining us. Actually we’ve learned that there is a fair bit of networking happening on these visits with East Cleveland people attending Middlesbrough ones and vice versa. This will be the first visit to become a “Digital Visit”, an experiment to map, display images and tell stories and make digital post cards about community visits.

I thought I would pass this on to you. It is a very good way for creating strong, unique and most importantly, memorable, passwords without the need to write them down. This idea came to me in a Newsletter from SocialOomph. With all the recent hacking scares I’ve been thinking I should diversify my passwords and cease to use too many of the same. The problem  is how can you make a password memorable and yet not obvious. The article below is a good start. I’m not planning to use exactly their method but a hybrid will be good I think. Perhaps you can see how you could adopt the idea.

Continue reading Stronger Passwords

Following on from yesterdays Marske visit we once again hit the Healthy Heritage Highway and had an afternoons walk right through Skinningrove. We were met at the Tom Leonard Mining Museum by Barry Hunt and by the time we reached the Doorstep Green we were also  joined by Tommy Evans so we had the full compliment of the famous Skinningrove dynamic duo. Tales of folklore, history, nature and regeneration abounded as the team snapped away with their cameras.

Image below the team at the Sealife Mosaic (click here for the story)

June had brought along her mum and whilst she matched us step for step she had her own Skinningrove stories having herself lived there and attended school in what is now the Riverside building. There was some tale of buying cigarettes at school aged 6 but we turned a deaf ear to this. Luckily our route took us past the Riverside building so we enjoyed tea and lemon cakes (no cigarettes this time) We have  heard stories about the German air raids during WW2 from the school log but but Junes mum had actually experienced the evacuation from the school and taking cover in the mine.

After tea we went onwards through the village. At 14 Stone Row we stopped for my own little bit of Skinningrove heritage about how I installed the first public computer in the village there. Then it was back to the professional raconteurs (Tommy and Barry) whilst we visited the  landmarks of the Sylvania Anchor, the Village Mosaic and the Repus. Barry even repeated the story of “The Boat Comes Home”  (The Repus) for some passing walkers on the Cleveland Way. How times have changed, walkers used to hurry through here without pause.

Our visit ended with a privileged visit to the Skinningrove Chapel. The Tour Goes On ! if you want to be involved email s.d.thompson@tees.ac.uk

The gallery below (click to enlarge) shows the team at work. The actual pictures will be seen at the exhibition in the summer.

Heritage and Health walked hand in hand as a small team visited Marske to take “Digital Postcards” today. The walk began at Winkies Castle Folklore Museum and followed a route set up by Joan Russel. Joan had made up a book of the route complete with heritage images of several locations and the team set off to take current pictures of each site.

Above, the team prepare for the photographic march. Joan gave a running commentary on what proved to be a most interesting afternoon. When we reached the beach we got talking about Marske Fishermans Choir and then the fishing industry in general which prompted Barry to tell us about the Tuna steaks he had marinading in Soy Sauce, Honey and Garlic (our mouths watered !) The walk finished by the grave of Captain Cooks father in the Marske cemetery. The finished images will end up in the Octorama tour which you can read about here. Tomorrow it’s Skinningrove.