Touching down in the Nation’s Capital as World Creativity and Innovation Week launches means I miss the UK a bit less. Why? Because this week invites me to shout about the GREAT British creative companies and innovators I just met across the pond – and at MIPTV in Cannes.
Take Log Media and their new partnership with Drive Productions to deploy 4-D projection mapping in the television industry, transforming traditional TV set design by combining CGI content and 3D animation. You may know this technology if you watched the BBC’s popular Graham Norton show a few weeks ago, where Drive deployed 4D to bring music performance alive through the TV screen, transforming our viewer experience.
If you prefer cuddlier, pastel-colored technology, travel north as I did to Studio Liddell’s production offices in Manchester, where young talent gives creative birth to cute, snuggly Cloudbabies, destined for CBeebies in a few weeks. Partnering with UK Indie Hoho Entertainment, the show will be 100 percent UK produced – an innovative creative partnership driven by technology. Studio Liddell also animates PBS Sprout’s Roary the Racing Car, showcasing their creative appeal on both sides of the Atlantic. Bottom line: they made me want to hug my computer.
And if you’re someone like me who is technology-challenged and often hears the diagnosis ‘operator malfunction’ from her IT colleagues, then the Brits have Richard Noble to bring us up to speed, so to speak, through his groundbreaking land speed STEM education project – the Bloodhound SSC.
Currently under construction in Bristol, the Bloodhound’s goal is to inspire the current generation of K-12 students to pursue careers in the STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and math – by garnering their interest in the development of a record-breaking supersonic car. Not only will BLOODHOUND SSC travel faster than the speed of sound, it’s designed to break the 1,000 mph barrier. That’s faster than a speeding bullet and a technical challenge on a par with getting into space.
If you’re skeptical, believe me – these guys know speed. Bloodhound will be driven by RAF fighter pilot Wing Commander Andy Green, who set the current speed record of 763mph at the Blackrock Desert in Nevada in 1997, driving Thrust SSC. Richard himself held the land speed title in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1983 and, working with Andy again, led the team that set the world record for the fastest diesel engine car in 2006. When it races in 2013 in South Africa, Bloodhound SSC will put all former land speed records to shame, demonstrating the best of British engineering and design.
And the best part of the project? All information about the research, design, build and testing of the car is available to teachers and students worldwide to follow, and to anyone who visits the Bloodhound’s website. As technological breakthroughs occur and as the car is built, tested and raced, we are all invited to follow its progress. It’s a global STEM project for students – courtesy of one of Britain’s GREAT innovators.
Which brings us back to The Power of Ideas. What are yours? This week encourages us to create some, and the Brits invite you to look to the UK for inspiration.
What truely fascinating information! I do wonder, though, who will drive, and what the bloodhound will be used in once its creation is complete. IT experts aren’t anticipating the average person finding use for one in future, are they? I would love to hear your thoughts
I am not certain (it can be sometimes difficult to detect mood through writing) whether or not you were sincere in your solicitation of my ideas. However in case you were, they are not nearly as amazing and inspirational as the ones which you laied out in this blog entry; they are much cimpler, yet essential for the innovative creations to take place this side of the pond so as to keep them on parr with the UK’s life-changing creations. They are to change the culture of American government to encourage and facilitate these types of creations–no small feat, by any measure.
I believe it is truely a shame that the UK, through its various departments of government streight up to the Prime Minister himself are encouraging British creativity and re-invention, exports, and all-around job creation while the federal US government, by contrast, debates the benefit of such untested proposals as whether birth control should be covered underhealth plans and the definition of motherhood.
I must admit, I envy your government a great deal.