Working on the BBC Blast Truck last year was one of the best summers of my life, it meant travelling all over the UK with the truck to create opportunity for young people in film making, animation, art, music, dance, etc etc etc….

BBC Blast is a great thing for young people, and the outreach tour is an amazing experience, if it pulls up in your town, go, it is well worth it.

Last year the main room within the truck had 15 Sony Viao PC laptops on the round tables, which were unreliable and in seldom demand by the facilitators in comparison to the three MacBook’s which sat in the studio. We found more and more of the facilitators working with the young people wanted to use the Mac’s for their workshops…. the PC’s were redundant at most locations while the three Mac’s were in constant use.

One big lesson learned from the 2006 tour was that the truck needed less PC’s and more Mac’s.

I arrived on the first day of the 2007 tour in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, to find the main room within the truck flooded with 12 new MacBook’s plus the three existing from the 2006 tour, there was not a PC in sight. The MacBook’s, which can run Microsoft Windows (dual boot) did not have Window’s installed.

I worked on the truck for three days running a film school with a group of young people, who did exceptionally well and created some excellent short films during their time with me. We worked with Final Cut Pro after an initiation in iMovie.

Last year, under the ‘Ultralab’ flag myself, Hal and Hamish acted in the ‘Lead Facilitator’ role for the duration of the national tour helping all the local facilitators to plan their workshops and deliver the Blast experience. ‘Lead Facilitator’ is a role that does not exist for the 2007 trip around the UK due to changes in the way the tour is being run this year.

It is clear to me that the 2007 tour will be very different to the 2006 tour, and I wish the BBC and the new truck team all the very best of luck in delivering the Blast experience.