AYCH Creative Jam, Fab City
On 9 and 10 November, participants from Plymouth Youth services, Plymouth College of Art and Ivybridge developed 4 impactful projects together for a sustainable future at the AYCH Creative Jam- an innovative, free two-day initiative to help young people develop their design thinking, digital making and enterprise skills.
The Creative Jam is a 2-day event bringing young people, partners, agencies and decision makers together to facilitate an opportunity to ‘get creative’ and build prototypes to address societal issues through workshops and a hackathon.
For this one, we have selected the theme of “Fab City”. The Fab City is an international network of cities across the globe sharing a common objective: becoming locally productive by 2054.
The Fab City Global Initiative is envisioning and constructing possible
urban futures by working at multiple and interconnected scales. Plymouth became the first UK Fab City over the summer 2019 and is now part of the international network together with Brest(France), Barcelona (Spain), Seoul (South Korea), and 28 other cities!
CONTEXT: By 2054 70% of us will live in cities. This rapid urbanization presents a grand challenge as well as a system-changing opportunity.
The broad and inspiring Fab City theme gathers 10 sub-themes:
- ECOLOGICAL
- INCLUSIVE
- GLOCALISM
- PARTICIPATORY
- ECONOMIC GROWTH & EMPLOYMENT
- LOCALLY PRODUCTIVE
- PEOPLE-CENTRED
- HOLISTIC
- OPEN SOURCE PHILOSOPHY
- EXPERIMENTAL
Learn, Design, Create and Pitch Process
Over the two days, young people were encouraged to use design, creative thinking, and technology to build new sustainable ideas, products or services that will create the city, urban and rural spaces of the future. We asked participants to think about designing new ways of producing and making food, products and services local
ly while being connected globally, sharing open source tools and expertise. Experts from a range of sectors including the creative, technology and digital, startup and enterprise, were on hand to teach them creative, design and enterprise skills to help transform their ideas into reality.
Using tools ranging from 3D Printers to laser cutters, participants learned skills in Coding, 3D printing and Laser Scanning, Projection Mapping, Animation, Social Enterprise and even Virtual Reality. Throughout the course of the workshops, young people formed teams to develop their ideas ready for pitching to a panel of expert judges at the end, who scored each idea for factors including how much social impact the project would have.
4 Innovative projects for a sustainable Plymouth Fab City
#1 People & Plants – Winner of the Creative Jam Audience Vote & Most Impactful Project
6 inclusive centres in Plymouth to locally produce food
Team Members: Hannah, Anya, Cain, Craig
- Gardens for everyone – community centre’s to create a safe space for community people.
- Look at providing a safe space for everyone, grow fruit and veg to be sold back into the community. Positive place for everyone, mental health, inclusions. Quiet spaces, café, fitness space. Build landscapes and plants for diff seasons, calm space include sensory room.
- Community performance, promoting local talent,
- Café & Shop – opportunity for people to meet, volunteering, income generation,
- Art Gallery for talent to come through and community guests.
- Different idea for transport – Boris Bike. Locate the gardens within 2 miles of city centre to can use bikes to get around them all
- Outdoor gym and games,
- Aim to Bring everyone together, everything a neighbourhood could want. Community engagement.
#2 Sensory Settee – Most Investable Project
Immersive sofa for all using VR/AR and senses
Team Members: Shanara, Goerge and Sam
How can we holistically support people with disabilities, mental health and wellbeing?
- Need for Virtual Reality with 4D sensory, to be available on NHS.
- To promote people’s mental wellbeing through a positive experience. Provide a safe, calming environment in different places.
- Believed a settee would be great in public spaces and nothing like this around at present. To use where people are usually anxious e.g. Dr Surgery.
#3 GNC – Most Impactful Project
Housing community for creatives and urban farming
Team Members: Nathan, Margaux, Magdelena
Green, Creativity circle living. Combine people in team skills. Aquaponics?
Context: Expensive housing, lifestyles more lonely, bad commute to work.
Solution: shared and individual space to help create community life. Reduces commute to work. Self-sufficient living and more inspiring space. Focused on self-employed creative people.
Urban Agriculture: Concept already out there, people doing in their back gardens, use fish waste to feed plants. Bringing nature back to the home. Extension of your kitchen or garden, put this in a communal space so people growing together, reduces food bills
6 home commune, self-sufficiency and creative space. green area. Need to share food more, share skills and communicate. Mores sustainable building practices. More sustainable housing.
#4 Shirt Project
Second life to clothing – sustainable fashion
Team Members: Jessie, Robert, Cara, Emma
What’s Eating at You?
Context: clothing industry causing waste, pollution following unethical principles all over the world.
Objective: Reducing clothes production, waste and pollution.
Solution: Pop up store, swap clothes, minimise packaging, and try clothes on and a mirror superimposes the clothes onto you.
Prototype: Animation, QR code, choose from selection, try on in magic mirror and then out and ready to wear.
If clothes works, scale up and use on other items, such as household items.
Works on tokens
AYCH Opportunity: bring creative and societal ideas to life!
Since then, 7 participants have signed up to join the AYCH incubation programme to take their project forward starting on the 5th February 2020 (launch event 15th January). The AYCH incubation is a free 9 month support period which provides with enterprise, creative and digital workshops and mentoring with various experts, equipment and facilities. A great opportunity for all young people aged 14 to 30 years old with an innovative idea.
If you are interested, please contact our AYCH project coordinator, Eli Zahoui ezahoui@pca.ac.uk or Jo Clements joanne.clements@plymouth.gov.uk .
Want to find out more?
- AYCH’s website: https://www.aych.eu
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- LinkedIn AYCH
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AYCH project
The overall AYCH project, that the Creative Jam is a part of, is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme, designed to promote transnational cooperation among 36 Atlantic regions in five European countries. The AYCH aims to develop new approaches and interventions within existing youth settings, as well as in both formal and non-formal education settings, to connect young people, creative and social business leaders, with experts in emerging and disruptive technologies and creative industries. This will take place across a network of “Atlantic Horizon Hubs” that will help them to develop ideas, new products and services.
