As a very small cog in the teaching establishment at the University, I’d been looking for an opportunity to show off the new facilities to my family.  BELIEVE looked like the kind of event that would appeal to the whole gang – from my four year old youngest daughter to my seventy-two year old mother-in-law.  

The big attraction for my daughters was being filmed with the BBC’s animated dinosaurs. How cool is that?

The first lot of time slots have already gone so we’re told to come back at 1.15.  No problem.  Plenty more going on.

The Digital Performance Lab was incredible and I bet the students have a ball playing with this.  We loved Picnic in the park!  The children sat on the picnic blanket and were miraculously joined by strange guests from another world (well, another room in the building, I guess!  But which one?)  Holding up the black and white cards brought animated birds, insects and plates of buns into the picture too.

And plenty of people are having a great time creating their personal walk with the dinosaurs.

But then…..

The queues were snaking right round the Egg.  No way we were going to get to see dinosaurs.  Very disappointing but the girls were brave.  And there’s more to art than dinosaurs, right?  And the interactive tables are pretty cool although they seemed to take it for granted that you could manipulate text with your fingers on a screen….

BELIEVE also gave people a chance to hear talks by both BBC and University specialists – creative writing, how Walking with Dinosaurs was made, technical careers in the media.

But spare a thought for Craig Campbell, creative technical demonstrator at the University, who had to upload all the dinosaur videos onto YouTube.

Helen Keegan’s (@Heloukee) always a great person to follow for fantastic photos and videos from the University.  This is an extract from a piece of animation by Mat Lloyd and Matt Frodsham that she captured.

Shame I can’t find a video clip of that.  It was a piece by Joe Chambers working with pupils from Salford’s Albion High School.  At least you can hear it in the background of this video of the interactive table.

But when you’re still only four and six all that digital technology is a bit boring after a while and it’s so much more fun being outside the building than in it, creating your own dynamic art!

Meanwhile…..

But you can always relive the whole event in 60″, Helen, if you need a bit of a lift on Monday!