In a series of workshops, children from rural areas in Ballycastle, Armoy, Irvinestown, Belleek and Roscor were taught research and ICT skills with a view to unlocking their creativity through expressive arts and multimedia. They carried out a research project about their town in a primary school project to promote rural communities online. Their completed work is now exhibited on the Ulster Wean’s website, guaranteeing the children’s work an international platform. The Nerve Centre was funded to deliver this project by the Rural Development Council through the EU Peace and Reconciliation Fund.

The following schools took part:

• Bunscoil An Chaistil, Ballycastle
• Ballycastle Integrated Primary School, Ballycastle
• St. Olcan’s Primary School, Armoy
• Armoy Primary School, Armoy
• St. Paul’s Primary School, Irvinestown
• Irvinestown Primary School, Irvinestown
• Belleek No. 2 Primary School, Belleek
• St. John the Baptist Primary School, Roscor
The Nerve Centre facilitated multimedia and community relations workshops in all of the schools. Two schools culturally diverse schools from the same town worked together, providing an opportunity for children from the two traditions to interact while exploring their local heritage and cultural diversity. The facilitators and teachers also aimed to teach children new skills including digital photography, video production, film and sound recording therefore empowering the children by giving them a voice to publicize what they most appreciate about their locality.
The schools took part in the programme of events below.

Introductory Community Relations Workshop (1 day)
Working with their partner school, pupils were paired up with a pupil from the other school. They were shown the Ulster Wean’s A-Z CD-ROM resource and were introduced to the concept of promoting their area to other young people through digital technologies. They selected the places which they felt were the most important for tourism in their area. These were recorded onto a blank map of their town.

Digital Storytelling Workshops (2 days)
As preparation to the digital storytelling sessions, pupils took photographs of their chosen aspect of their town. This could include a beautiful place in their town, a great place to eat, a historical place, a great place to shop, a place to have fun, local animals, or any other aspect of their town a pupil might choose to do their project on. Pupils wrote information about their topic to be used as a voiceover in their digital story.

The Nerve Centre brought laptops and other equipment to the schools to facilitate the workshops. The pupils’ photographs were loaded onto the computers for them to use. At the start of the digital storytelling workshop, pupils created a storyboard for their project. Working with a partner, they wrote five sentences about their topic and selected which photographs and drawings would go with each sentence. Pupils were then taken group by group into a quiet room to record their 5 sentence voiceovers. Having selected their images, pupils used graphics software to digitally enhance their photographs.

On Day 2 of the digital storytelling workshop, pupils were introduced to video editing software. They were given a demonstration and then each group put their voiceover sound files into their project and added the photographs to the appropriate sentence. Then they added titles, credits, transitions and effects. At the end of the workshop, the completed digital stories were projected on a big screen for the whole class to see.

Community Relations Workshop (1 day)
Pupils were paired with a pupil from their partner school during this workshop. They looked through the photographs that they had taken of their favourite places in their town and selected their favourite shot. They then cut the photo up into strips and spliced their photograph with their partner’s. This was pasted onto a sheet of construction paper. They then looked at the colours that were in the photographs and scribbled these colours onto the same sheet to create a colour palette for their weaves. Working from this colour palette, pupils selected shades of coloured yarn and learned how to weave the yarn onto a frame. Pupils also took part in creating a giant weave with large pieces of fabric.

Video and Animation Workshops (4 days)
Some of the schools were involved in video production about their local area while others took part in animation workshops. All of these sessions involved pupils from partner schools working together. 

The video workshops involved a day’s brainstorming and preparation with pupils deciding which locations they would go and take video footage of. They then created a storyboard and wrote their scripts. Pupils travelled by minibus to the various locations in their town. Working with a professional video crew, pupils presented their chosen locations by talking to camera. Some of them acted out scenes from stories about their location.

During the animation workshops pupils learned about stop motion animation. Animators taught them how to make models out of plasticine for the sequences about their town. Pupils each got a chance to see how animation is done using video cameras, animation software, lighting and sets.

Celebration Event
The partner schools came together to view the work that had been completed during the project. The digital stories, videos, animations and artwork were shown on a big screen complete with popcorn. Some of the schools invited the whole school to the celebration event. Teachers were given copies of the completed work to keep.