We’ve had our first submitted film for SciCast! Yay! I haven’t seen it yet – the disc is winging its way from NESTA’s London office to me in Glasgow – but we’ll see if we can’t get it on the site this week. Best of all – the school who’ve sent it isn’t one we’ve ever heard of. Looks like they picked up the story from Learning and Teaching Scotland, or possibly the Times Educational Supplement who ran a story a week ago in Scotland (odd, since they previously ran stuff nationally in May, but I’m not complaining).
We’ve also had encouraging and positive meetings with the National Media Museum and Scottish Screen, and I’m starting to think about how the site might evolve in the next year. I’ve a vague plan that gets about as far as taking over Europe, if not the world, each stage of which sounds almost frighteningly plausible. Funding, however, is going to be tricky – I think it’s hard to see this happening without industrial support.
Trouble is – where do you find a company or organisation that wants to spend money to identify with the next generation of creative, science- and media-literate, publishing-savvy, web-community-participating citizens? A company that wants to be seen supporting a practical, collaborative, non-competitive, positive approach, in which users develop materials for mutual learning and entertainment? A company that wants to bask in the reflected glory of doing something cutting-edge modern, and yet reassuringly familiar – taking the forty years-old ideals of public service children’s TV, and updating them for the twenty-first century? A company that wants to help people to help themselves, spreading life skills and building a shared resource that will last for years?
Damn, that’s going to be hard. Those are really weird ideals. [cough]
If anyone reading this should happen to want to save me the hassle of knocking on doors, and has six figures to spend (probably low six figures, depends exactly what you want), drop me a line: jonathan(at)quernstone.com. No, I don’t seriously expect this to work, but hey – it’s worth asking. Some odd people read this blog.