IDEAS for Impact have been offering projects across the university support in their collaborative research activities. The Creative Exchange were one of the first projects to receive this support for the planning and tools for the Creative Lounge event that was held on the 4th of July at MediaCity in Salford.
In particular, IDEAS designed and produced interactive ‘peep boards’ for the event participants to use to build and personalise their avatar as they arrived, which was then photographed and given to each person to write on who they were, their interests and where their heart was. Each participant presented their answers with a 10 second timer before attaching them to a tube map of themes to show where their potential project interests were located and help cluster themselves into teams.
These tools worked particularly well to set the tone for a fun event with people arranging accessories in strange formations and crouching for their photographs taken! It also provided everyone with an easy format to structure key pieces of information to introduce themselves to the rest of the group and ensured they were represented on the map of themes.
IDEAS believe this effective tool could be easily adapted for other collaborative projects in the future.
Laura Wareing
Leon Cruickshank
Naomi Jacobs
Corinne Pritchard
Malé Luján Escalante