Digital Literacy Project

Since 2014, Ramsay has been exploring stop-motion animation as way of exploring creative and imaginary worlds.

He has continued have the drive to improve upon his story telling and digital media techniques.

Ramsay created these stories, illustrated them, narrated them and did all the digital media edited at the Atwater Library.

Backyard Buddies – By Ramsay (2016)

The Wee People – By Ramsay (2015)

The Singing Tree – Ramsay (2014)

Seeing Red: Young People’s Stories for the Eyes, From the Heart

On Saturday, February 27, 2016 from 5:00 pm to 1:00 am at the Atwater Library (1200 Atwater Ave)

Except for school hallways, kids don’t usually have the chance to share their thoughts and experiences, expressed creatively. In Seeing Red, twenty-one Montrealers aged 6-11 create stories and transform them into digital art that comes from their hearts.

Working with three Montreal authors (Raquel Rivera, Marie-Louise Gay, and Greg Santos) and with new media facilitators ( Nicola Sibthorpe, Nina Pariser, Viola-Rose Day and Eric Craven) youth at the Atwater Library and at the Pointe St-Charles YMCA created these works of poem and story-based video and animation.

Part of the Atwater Writers Exhibition (AWE), a multiformat celebration of English-Quebec writing, with support from the Community Cultural Action Fund, Department of Canadian Heritage.

On Saturday, February 27, 2016 from 5:00 pm to 1:00 am we are welcoming the public for an exciting community-based new media installation.

Immerse yourself in a sound and video installation that begins with images projected through the front windows of our heritage building. Inside, our reading room will be transformed by a multi-media exhibition created by seniors who digitized and re-edited home movies from the 40s to the 70s, and made their own music and sound using digital tools. An extension of our Digital Literacy Project with support from New Horizons for Seniors and Ageing + Communication + Technologies (ACT).

Armed with reels of old home movies, a small group of people met with Eric Craven, the Digital Literacy Project Coordinator of the Atwater Library, in October 2015. This original footage was, in some cases, filmed by the participants themselves, as children. Other reels were home movies shot by their parents. The film dates range from the 1940’s to the 1970’s.

After the films were digitized into a modern format by Karl Lemieux, a Montréal filmmaker, Eric taught each participant how to use editing software. Over the ensuing winter months, the group came to the Library in their spare time to work on their projects. He encouraged them to explore the available features and craft new versions of their movies. This evolved into the creation of a collaborative film.

Since the summer, a group of seniors have been meeting every Friday to make music digitally. The music you hear tonight is the result of their exploration and creation centred on listening in new ways and hearing differently. Some of the work is more traditional, with familiar melodies and rhythms. Others are less traditional and explore a different range of melodies and rhythms of everyday life. Birdsong, crowd speech, construction sounds and more.

Juxtaposed against the videos of the Moving Pictures project, these sounds form an unlikely soundtrack to a world of memories captured in light and time.

A string of events, seemingly unrelated, yet charmingly harmonious, have come together in this ambitious and tender project. Some have narrated their scenes – sharing memories and thoughts with the viewer.

2014 was a great year for the Digital Literacy Project. We made many new partners and expanded our programs in new and interesting ways.

Here are some of the highlights:

We worked with Gerald McShane Elementary School in Montreal North to help them explore four different learning styles (visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic) through digital media such as video, PowerPoint and animation.

In early January we conducted a workshop for the clients of the Tyndale St-Georges Little Burgundy Employment Centre about social media, internet privacy and how to build a positive online identity.

With funding from the federal government’s New Horizons for Seniors program, we offered a series of workshops aimed at empowering musically-oriented seniors to use computers and later teach others to use computers to record and create music. The workshops were facilitated by Eric Craven and Peter Shaw, a student in theatre at Concordia University, with the collaboration of Line Grenier, a professor in Communication studies at Université de Montréal.

The participants impressed us with a wide range of musical expression that was inspiring and challenging. You can hear some of the work that was made  their Soundcloud page Alt-Together. as well as video featuring one of the projects called “Fried Brains”.

Through our connection with ACT (Ageing + Communications + Technologies) Eric Craven and Dr. Line Grenier had the opportunity to co-present a paper about the project at the European Communication Research and Education Association Conference (ECREA) in Lisbon in November 2014 as part of a panel called “New Media and Older People – Age, Narratives and Normativities.”
Check out the trailer and another video we made for this presentation.

While in Portugal,  Eric Craven  also  gave a talk entitled “Digital Culture and Community” at the Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (Madeira-ITI).

For most of the year, we worked with youth from diverse backgrounds to make videos about pluralism. At certain points of the year, this was hot button issue due to the public debate about the proposed Charter of Values. For this project, we collaborated with Trisha Islam and Rana Salah to connect with youth in the community. We held talks, screenings, and workshops at the Library and around the city. In the end, we made over 30 videos. You can check them out on our pluralism video site.

We worked with  Bienvenue à Notre-Dame-de-Grâce to offer digital skills development related to community event planning. There were 2 sessions, one in English and one in French, participants came to the Library once a week for 10 weeks. We covered general computer skills, elements of graphic design and social media marketing.

We collaborated with visual artist Romeo Gongora’s project Just Watch Me at Concordia University’s Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery.  Digital Literacy Project facilitators Rana Salah and Nina Pariser did three poetry and digital media workshops and also screened videos from our recent Youth Pluralism Video Project

On September 21, 2014, we set up at Empire Exchange in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood and did a green video workshop as part of the POP Montreal International Music Festival’s Kids POP Crawl. Check out what the kids did.

We partnered Concordia University’s Theatre and Development program for the third time in three years. Students in a course called “The Neighbourhood Theatre” connected with two graduate studies seminars from different disciplines under the name “The Right to the City: Cross-disciplinary pedagogy and the politics of Montreal’s South-West.”  We  supported this initiative by connecting the students to our partners and helping them create an online “digital reflection” of the experience through social media, video and photography. On November 29, 2014, the students showed their work to the public in Pointe Saint-Charles. See the student’s work on The Right to the City website.  Earlier in the year, Concordia University made a video our  previous collaboration for their Spotlight on Community Engagement series.

On Sunday September 21, we set up at Empire Exchange in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood and did a green video workshop as part of the POP Montreal International Music Festival’s Kids POP Crawl.

Check out the what the kids did.