Digital Arts Festival: Uncovering careers in the creative sector

10/07/2018
Digital Arts Festival

The University of Essex welcomed crowds of excited students and their teachers to their Colchester Campus as part their Digital Arts Festival 2018.

The University's Employability and Careers team in the Faculty of Humanities worked with the University’s Outreach team to create an exciting programme of activities and interactive displays building on our links with the region’s creative sector. 

The ESB's Education and Industry STEM programme supported Essex schools to attend the day by providing travel burseries for their students.

As part of the festival the Ivor Crewe Lecture Hall hosted a multisensory experience zone decorated with interactive artwork brought to the university by local digital artists, including:

  • Rituals, a 2 part installation, comprising of a virtual reality experience, running on an HTC Vive and an augmented reality app via a mobile device by Sian Fan.
  • TEO an innovative interactive artwork that uses A.I facial detection & expression recognition to animate virtual avatars, from artists Barbara Dougan and Henry Driver.
  • Pyrit Deck from freelance artist and writer, Laura Trevail. Laura makes things that move about, and things that threaten to do so when they probably shouldn't.
  • MaoMaoCastle, a high-speed game featuring a magical flying Cat-Dragon developed by AsobiTech.

 

The festival also encouraged students to take part in digital workshops and ask questions at a Careers Corner where they could ask questions about careers in the digital arts sector with representatives from the University'sEmployability and Careers Centre, Colchester Institute, apprenticeship specialist QA, the Young Creative Council, Creative and Cultural Skills and the Mercury Theatre.

WhatsYourThing.org.uk showcased

The Careers Corner gave us a chance to showcase our brand new careers website with students who attended the day and also showcase our brand new VR logistics experience! 

The festival was a great success and our Outreach team are already busy planning next year’s event.