rick – The People Speak

You’re hired! Collaboration instead of competition

The Inverse Apprentice is a creative entrepreneurship programme provoked by the TV show ‘The Apprentice’.

Our format, in contrast to the TV programme, is led entirely by the participants – Tower Hamlets residents. The programme delivered in partnership with the local talent, business owners and entrepreneurs uses personal creativity, cooperation and diversity of thought as a framework to develop participants’ self worth and employability skills. The apprenticeship aims to raise aspirations of the participants by helping them to gain agency and practical tools to become local instigators of change responding to their community’s needs.

The Inverse Apprentice is a collaboration between The People Speak art collective, Spotlight youth hub and a posse of creative businesses in Aberfeldy Street, Poplar.

Get involved

If you are interested in joining the project as a participant, aged 18 or over and based in Tower Hamlets – we would love to hear from you.

If you are an artist, creative or entrepreneur linked with Tower Hamlets or wider east London, who wants to help us shape the project and respond to participants needs – let’s have a chat.

Drop us a line to find out more info@thepeoplespeak.org.uk

The Inverse Apprentice is supported by

In collaboration with

“Basically, it’s a film-making-conveyer-belt that squeezes the imagination out of anybody who comes along, mixes it with everybody else’s and puts it on video.”

Segue – a developing experimental format from The People Speak. It has emerged from workshops we have done for our own creative growth and for others. We discovered a strong desire from participants to better express their performative and creative self. Segue is about generating a spontaneous and collaborative performance and narrative from participants using the diverse combination of skills that we have available within our group. It exists in a space between immersive theatre, film making and performance workshop.

The Segue team includes an expert visualiser who provides instant VR backdrops and special effects, character and narrative devising specialist, fast cardboard prop makers, performance facilitators, makeup and costume specialists, instant sound effects, editing, camera, conceptualiser, storyboard artists.

We have an instantly reconfigurable film set consisting of a semicircular projection screen, cameras, props and costumes, video displays, all of which are part of our standard production kit.

The ultimate product is an edited film, with a narrative arc, but the real crux of the project is creative participation in it and the feeling of your own creative input. Visitors to the space will be asked to contribute to the story line, define their own character, create props and costume, locate the epicentre of drama and, if they want, perform a scene. A rough version of the video footage is regularly posted on a screen in the space as it is updated.

YouTube

The making of The Key of Chaos
‘The Phantom of Fortune’ Trailer
‘The Phantom of Fortune’ in full

Vimeo
‘The Phantom of Fortune’ Trailer
‘The Phantom of Fortune’ in full

Remember that everything in these videos was created by visitors to the festival who hadn’t met each other before. Conceived, filmed and edited in 6 days. On 7th day we rested

Photo Documentation:

Segue – Instant walk-in film factory, 31 0cober – 6 November 2011, Location: High Bridge Gallery 31-39 High Bridge City Centre, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 1EW

http://www.flickr.com/photos/saulalbert/sets/72157628085976793/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/saulalbert/sets/72157628083429973/

Layout

The experience of Segue is a kind of generative journey with a sequence of areas involving different creative processes. One encounters a series “desks” until you reach the shooting area. It sounds very bureaucratic but will actually be a lot of fun.

The audience will then go through a process where in the waiting room they will first watch the latest version of what we have filmed already, plus clips from films that have been referred to on a video ‘pasteboard’.

Next they will go to the character and narrative development desk workshop section. Here they will be asked to develop a character and a back story for their character.

The whole thing will be communicated through a ‘heckle’ feed so that everyone in the crew can be made aware of the emerging story and to try and weave in similarities. Heckle is a custom visualisation software we have built.

They will then proceed to the storyboard desk, where suitable backgrounds and scenes are created. Finally will be referred to the prop and makeup desk.

Equipped with scenes, props, characterisation and narrative they move to the “film studio” section. We have two back projection screens to shoot in front of which will be adjacent to each other at an angle.

This material will be fed to the editing and post production desk where it will be incorporated into the latest edit, which will be added to the viewing screen.

Segue Project Development:

Soho Story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHuir9hICqc
Segue Open Studio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVlugNmJNyY
Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/saulalbert/sets/72157627869118696/

What is Heckle? Heckle is a web based visual augmentation system that overlays a live video stream or still images with keywords, images, video and other information as they arise in conversation. You then have a visual record of the flow of the conversation.

Development of Heckle began in 2007, in collaboration with Wojciech Kosma, to use in conjunction with our existing projects such as Talkaoke, Who Wants to Be…? and Unlecture. It has grown to become an essential tool during our shows, allowing viewers to understand where the topic of conversation has got to and potential new directions of conversation. It also gives an indication of the spread of views and ideas at the event.

Heckle at Who Wants to Be…?, Wunderbar, Newcastle

Heckle at ‘Unlecture’, UCL

How it works: Heckle can be operated using a single computer, or several different machines. A simple interface allows the user to send text, images, videos, websites and wikipedia pages to an external display. These objects overlay a video feed or slideshow of still images. Chapters can also be inserted to break up the conversation into categories. Each entry posted appear instantly over a live video, or still image, on the external screen. Recently Twitter has been integrated into the system so users are able to add comments from specific #Hashtags.

Voting at ‘Who Wants to Be..?’, Unicorn Theatre

Voting System: Heckle also has a voting system application, which we use mostly for Who Wants to Be…?, allowing for 3 way voting on any subject. It also links to a vote counting program, designed in collaborating with Artem Baguinski, at V2 Centre, Rotterdam, which recognises and counts the different coloured cards via a DSLR camera. The numbers are sent from the vote counting system to Heckle so the exact result can be displayed.

Heckle is still in development and is improving all the time. It is not yet ready for public use but if you are interested in using heckle for an event or project, or helping us develop it then please get in touch hello@thepeoplespeak.org.uk

Example of the final Heckle cloud.

Talkaoke's first event with In-Situ. ACE Centre, Nelson

Talkaoke goes North

In-Situ is an artists’ group based in Pendle, Lancashire. They have been exploring the role of young people in cultural decision-making processes. Working in partnership with the local youth forums, they have been developing meaningful and honest dialogues with young people in Pendle.

Talkaoke first came to Pendle as part of a Creative Partnerships project in Pendle Vale School in 2008. It was here that In Situ saw the potential to use Talkaoke as a tool for generating dialogue and ideas.

Talkaoke is just one of the tools they have been using to create a two-way dialogue between adults and young people living in Pendle and ameliorate the limited engagement that currently occurs when young people attend adult-oriented meetings. This has also happened through the use of social media platforms and face to face dialogue.

New talent from Bacup, James host a Talkaoke session

Working in collaboration with The People Speak, In Situ have created a local hub for Talkaoke in Pendle. Check our events page for up to date information on the continuing Talkaoke events in the East Lancashire area as well as the #talkaokependle twitter tag.