What’s this powerpack tool? For us, a team of young creators in Italy, the powerpack is the creative project and process itself. We like to think about this Powerpack as a path made on the steps we took while creating our creative project.
Are you thinking to create your own creative project, taking over some digital spaces? You may are in the right place.
In these steps we collected we used from time to time the support of a facilitator, a tutor or sometimes few adults of our trust. If you know someone (facilitators, tutors, mentors, anyone you trust for their experience in the field) who may can help or connect you with professionals in the field of your interest we reccomend to ask them for support in some specific tasks of your choice, in our case this has made us save some time, stick with some deadlines and enjoy the creative process.
Our team took over the lead for the creative project and used Mulab’s facilitator to support when needed. The creative project we chose to create is a videopodcast and we want to share it as one possible example of TAKE OVER.
These guidelines are meant just as a support for the comprehension of the process through the creative project. You and your group are free to create the creative project , the preliminary contents or the “lesson learnt” content according to your needs, interests and preferences (i.e. short videos, interviews, podcasts, zines, magazines, music….)
The following guidelines have been produced while working on a creative project for the EU project Big Time Take Over. Our facilitators invited us to “takeover digital spaces” and followed us in the process of the making of it.
Basically they challenged us to teach them about digital tools and the things we care and explain how we learn ourselves with those tools. They seem to have learnt quite a lot from our discussions.
We enjoyed and were provided with an approach based on dialogue, suspension of judgement in favour of pushing debate, active listening to our needs, interests and opinions.
If you would like to try to Takeover some digital space and create your own creative project with a group of friends or other peers have a look of our steps, we hope you’ll find these useful!
step 0 - LET’s DIVE RIGHT IN…
I – “Read the room”: If you feel that you or anyone in your group of peer need or would enjoy to explore some aspects of the digital environment, think about ask for some tutor, faciliator of your trust to focus on those aspect of your interest and provide you an induction on digital communications protocols.
Sometimes tutors may not be properly updated with the level of knowledge that you or your group of peers already have on digital, for this reason is important that you help your tutor to develop a NON-standardized induction, something that is appropriate with your level. To do so here you can find some material that you can share with your facilitator to keep up with your level of needs. Check it out yourself!
Rinova’s Digital induction material elaborated by Rinova
II – Did you know that children and young people, including you and your friends, have plenty of rights to live a happy and healthy life? These apply to a whole range of aspects, from nutrition to instruction, including the rights to play, express your values, beliefs… Our partner Hope For Children collected here some useful material you may want to check and share with your peers! And…why not share them with some adults as well?
Induction on Cultural Expression and Rights of the Child elaborated by HFC.
[Induction_suggested time frame: we think that a reasonable time to spend on this induction is 1 to 2 weeks, of course, you can plan the time differently with your facilitator according to your needs]
step I
Remember that the decision-making process is all yours. You and your group of peers have the task to design and choose what type of content to create, the topic, what kind of media, what kind of channel, style, art form…
[Brainstorming phase_suggested time frame 1 week]
i.e In Italy we chose to create a video podcast. The main topic is around gaming and the digital social communications around it, and the main channels have been youtube, Instagram and podcasting platforms, the media proposed have been visual contents, mostly Instagram stories, sketches.
step II
Sometimes during the creative process of making a project you can feel lost or confused for many reasons: you may have too many ideas or you may feel you have none that convinces you. To avoid this it is important that you ask your facilitator beforehand for some light framework or creative “boundaries” to facilitate the creative flow.
[Briefing phase_suggested time frame 1 week]
i.e. In Italy once we identified the topic of interest and what kind of content we would enjoy creating, the team was asked to keep a collaborative and fun dialectic, with a positive attitude towards the digital debate between us and adults
step III
You want to get the most out of the experience of making a creative project! And you should!! Once you and the group have decided the type of content you are going to create, make sure you ask your tutor or facilitator to facilitate and promote the meeting with relevant mentors who will observe you learning by doing and eventually provide “side support”
[Developing phase_suggested time frame 2 to 4 weeks]
i.e. In our case, we asked our facilitators from Mulab to meet some professionals to help us with cameras and directing tasks and they organised for us some shooting days with Valeriano Solfiti, artist, actor and director who supported our group “on-demand” during the process
step IV
Plan and enjoy experimenting with preliminary activities to practice through role-playing while creating creative content. To do so, after you choose the type of creative project you want to produce, try to practice and train yourself to create similar but simpler content. Ask your facilitator to plan some activities for you, they’re here to help after all!!
[Developing phase_suggested time frame 2 to 4 weeks]
i.e. In our case we were working on video content, in particular, comedy sketches to be shared as Instagram stories. The whole team had different roles. Our facilitators from Mulab made us create short videos to be used as Instagram stories to eventually share the BITTO project on social media. In that case, we acted as content creators who took over Mulab social accounts.
Have a look on our practice contents here
step V
Make sure that you and your group have a “real-time” assessment of what you are learning and the skills needs you feel you have. Trust us, you’ll find yourselves developing more skills than you expect. To prove that though, you need to pay a little attention to yourself and the team. You can also ask your facilitator to keep an eye on this aspect through direct observation and “side support”
[Developing phase_suggested time frame 2 to 4 weeks]
i.e. In our case, while we were working on our project our facilitator was by our side observing and intervening only with proactive and focused tips in a practical way, definitely avoiding frontal class style
step VI
Do you know that there are European frameworks to keep track of the competencies you are developing through the activities during the process of your creative project making? Ask your facilitator to share with you the relevant ones! Being aware of the correlation between competencies and the activities you do could give you a boost while debating with others or adults about your creative projects or digital in general.
[Developing phase_suggested time frame 2 to 4 weeks]
i.e. In our case we discussed with our facilitators in Mulab about digital competencies, entrepreneurial competencies, learning to learn, soft skills…
step VII
Make sure your whole group has dedicated time or activities for reflective practice in order to raise self-awareness and the ability to give and receive feedback. You can use this reflective practice to gain familiarity and confidence with both the topics you are focusing on with your project and the competencies. The more you practice this aspect the more you will be confident in debates with peers or adults with different opinions. Your facilitators should grant and provide the team with discussion sessions, debates or circle times, ask for them!!
[Evaluation phase_suggested time frame 1 to 2 weeks]
i.e. In our case we asked our facilitators to take care of the organization of discussion sessions where we meet regularly to discuss about improvement needs as well as skills that we use regularly or others we discovered we have always had but never realised until we focused on them
step VIII
Once you have had the chance to reflect on all the competencies and skills you have shown or developed during the process, you want to share it with your peers outside the group. Now that you are more confident than when you started with content creation, produce as a group one piece of content of your choice, a sort of “lesson learnt” to be shared with an audience of your peers. Show them the outcomes of your reflective practice with a focus on the process of the approach to technologies and digital tools and how they approached the learning process, how to learn a certain tool…
[Evaluation phase_suggested time frame 1 to 2 weeks]
i.e. In our case we tested two different modalities: one “for dummies”, the other “hacking” full immersion, trial and error. Plus a brief caption with the “technical ingredients” of the content. You can see our example at the minute 26:00 of our creative project video
While following those steps you just saw how we created our project. If you are curious about it check it here: ITALY CREATIVE PROJECT
You can have your say and develop your digital skills by working on any creative project! Here are some other examples of what you can do to train yourself
Polish project (Arteria’s Young People)
Cypriot project (Hope For Children’s Young People)
UK project (Rinova’s Young People)
Macedonian project (MKC’s Young People)
[Галерија] Во МКЦ отворена пермакултурната градина „Градиднина
Italian project (Materahub’s Young People)
