I’ve been up to my neck and beyond these past few weeks on the BBC Blast national truck tour.

As I posted earlier on this blog, I’ve been touring with the truck to support the Beeb’s facilitation of workshops role.

Hal MacLean and I worked together on the London Event based in White City. Our role was to teach young people film editing and animation, while supporting the facilitators of the other workshops to achieve Blast objectives.

So far I’ve worked on the truck in Liverpool (with Shirley), Derry (Martin came along), Belfast (our Anthony made big friends with BBC Northern Ireland)…. Derry and Belfast were Hamish’s locations, I helped with the animation classes. In Manchester our Shirley supported me again….then when the truck arrived in Sheffield it was all Hal’s. The truck next rolled into Cardiff and I ran workshops in English, Geraint ran the same workshops in the Welsh language. White City London was manned by Hal and myself.

The White City event was based outside BBC Television Centre in an old car-park. Hamish and Colin brought down the young people from the Anglia Ruskin University Summer School for a day on the truck. On the final day of White City Ultralab Director, Richard Millwood joined the event and even took up one of the camera positions to film the showcase event.

We’re having great fun on the truck, which today is in Trafalgar Square…. See if you can spot Hal on the webcam!.

After months of planning, and many trips between North Building Chelmsford and BBC TV Centre….we’re really pleased to announce that the Ultralab team will be joining the BBC onboard the national BBC Blast Truck tour.

It all kicks off in Liverpool next week, I’ll be there running creativity workshops and supporting creative young people to reach their potential with digital technologies.

The truck will be heading all over England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales providing creative opportunity for the 13-19 age range. It will stop at each of the locations for a period of around three days and will work with the local community to support young people with creative ideas. BBC 2 television will be following the truck for part of the tour.

Dance, Arts, Animation, Film and Music will be central for the tour…

Ultralab have a long and rich history working with the BBC from the early days of BBC Online right through to the big research project into the future of childrens television Input CBBC back in 2001.

BBC Blast and Ultralab have worked together in 2004 (at the V&A) and more recently on the creativity stand at BETT Show 2005 and at the presentation to the BBC senior management celebrating Blast.

Hal MacLean, Hamish Scott-Brown and myself will cover each of the locations (one per venue) supported by other Ultranaut’s along the way….Really looking forward to working with Shirley Pickford in Liverpool.

Real exciting times as the worlds most innovative broadcaster partners with our team for another exciting adventure together with other big real key players and leading lights in the digital creativity evolution.

Check out our Digital Creativity History from 2000 - 2004 (I’m writing 2005/6 into the new site, which will launch soon, watch this space).