Roz Dean

Roz Dean

About Roz Dean

Roz lives in the world of creative media, she likes to tell stories and make events happen. Packed full of enthusiasm she spends a lot of her time asking questions and dreaming up ideas. Roz specialises in making adults act silly and making people laugh. When not working or daydreaming, Roz can be found wandering around looking for an adventure or in a pub meeting characters. She also has an unnatural obsession with the retro-future.

Roz Dean's blog

Reflecting on Future Producers

Attending the last future producers meeting was a little bit sad. I’ve really enjoyed my time working in the Watershed and finding out about the Pervasive Media studio and all the projects that take place there. I’ve had such a great time meeting talented people on the course and networking with professionals.

Jess set us some tasks to think about the process we’ve been through.  It was a fantastic time for some reflection on what we had achieved and how we have grown in a professional sense. One of the most important things that came up a lot was confidence. We all agreed that we have experienced a growth in confidence through engaging in this programme. Looking back I feel I have achieved so much and have some amazing experiences to reflect on.

Here is some of the group notes:

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My next steps after this experience will be trying to find work in a production company or as part of a live events team.

The Event

So it happened, the event. I could not believe how many people came and got involved. I’m overwhelmed by the participation from both the audience and the partners who came to showcase their work.

Saturday:

After the nerve-racking ordeal of introducing Fun Palace to a packed bar the evening launched, the Cube Orchestra took centre stage and blasted everyone’s socks off. This is when I took control of the debate station with my sidekick Mark. It went down so well – much better than I could have imagined. Everyone wanted to get involved in debating visions of the future.IMG_20141004_220335571

UV ping-pong was a massive success and although a lot of the décor suffered a few set backs, I think what we delivered was enough to set a space themed environment in the Watershed.

I was massively impressed with BFI guys launching their film season. The telescope on the bar was an excellent idea and fitted in with Fun Palace perfectly. The very talented Memotone, who did a special sci-fi themed set, brought Fun Palace’s first night to a close. Looking at the faces at the bar it was clear we had managed to succeed with our aim to bring in a new audience.

Day two began with a lot of setting up to do; this was our more technology heavy day. All the partners arrived and we all got stuck in decorating and setting up the café, conferences rooms and make station. I spent a lot of time building cardboard boxes to help create Alex Latham abandon moon base for his game Gorb the Cyborg. This was a game I really wanted to run at Fun Palace – I felt it needed a physical gaming aspect. Before the event we were unsure how successful the game would be, but I’m pleased to report it went down amazingly well. We ran four games with 3 to 5 people playing each one, the game filled up and we received a diverse audience aged between 7 and 50+. And the best part? No one got injured! Part of wanting to run this game was to try and engage a variety of audience in the world of play and imagination. This is one of my own personal goals. I feel we succeeded in this, part of the focus being on pushing the barriers and not being too scared to try. The team work, smiles and enthusiasm on peoples faces as they attempted to solve the clues and win the game was priceless.

For more information on Alex Latham and his urban games: https://www.facebook.com/bristolurbangames

The weekend felt like such a success and it’s a wonderful feeling to have been involved in producing it. It tackled a lot of personal goals and gave me a great opportunity to work with the community.

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Start The Countdown

  And now we’re here the final week before Fun Palace, the stress has began but the adrenal is about to kick in!

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Me, Jas and Fred have spent the evening playing with balloons, Arduino, LED’s and other materials to decorate the Mothershed for it’s sci-fi themed evening. With only a few days left to build and make I know a lot of long evenings are ahead. Making, testing and building is the most exciting and crucial part of organizing an event like this. Planning and discussing ideas was great, but here we begin to see the event come to life as it leaps off the paper.

Having spent my evenings at the Pervasive Studio it’s been incredible seeing various items (including robots) arrive for the weekend

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I have no idea what to expect from the event, it’s difficult to imagine as it’s the first of it’s kind, but meeting the contributors and seeing what they have built has given me a good insight. Hopefully the audience will be as intrigued as I am.

I’ve been talking about it a lot and placing leaflets around the university I attend. I’m hoping it will be a success and will form the building blocks of future celebrations of opening spaces, making art and science more accessible for all.
I feel so lucky to have had this opportunity to programme an event of this nature and I’ve already learned a hell of a lot from just the organising alone.

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Research Trip

Back from my “research trip” to Shambala and I’ve learned a lot. Firstly adults love to dress up. At a festival like Shambala there’s no end to sequins, face paint and homemade costumes. The second is that adults like to game, they just have to feel like they’re in a safe environment. Gaming company Foul Play brought their game Fox Hunt  to the festival and it certainly seemed to go down well.

Source: http://foxhunt.foulplayproductions.co.uk/

Adults and children alike played side by side to hunt each other down. Even people commented on how they would like to join in, but had already consumed too much cider to start running around! This is exactly why I think we should be running a few street based games at the event.

Watching events unfold at the family fun festival really highlighted what we are trying to produce with Fun Palace. A little bit of enthusiasm from both the production team and the audience could go a long way in making the event successful. This leads to the important task of advertising. Who are our audience, where do we find them and how do we attract them? As Fun Palaces is a new event how do we explain it’s purpose without drawing on past experiences. A tag line perhaps? “Its like a party in space, in a place for you to explore.”

After a 4 hour meeting with Fred Iles we have decided that no Fun Palace should be complete without a space themed den to hold workshops in. After going through the public’s initial ideas, building something large and playful seems like a popular choice. 

A DIY architecture day to make new palaces or dens within the building, creating temporary walls and secret places within Watershed to work and play in

Permission to do the things you weren’t allowed to do as a child e.g. draw on the walls, unlock doors not ordinarily open to the public

Inspiring people to transform their own homes, workplaces, schools into Fun Palaces when they leave

A ‘time tunnel’ in the covered walkway outside Watershed, taking you further back/forward in time as you walk through

Source: https://www.watershed.co.uk/pmstudio/news/2014/06/19/everyone-and-artist-everyone-scientist-fun-palaces-lunchtime-talk

Now for the challenging/fun part – getting the idea approved by health and safety!


Come with us now on a journey through time and space…

So the weeks are beginning to pick up pace and here we are at week three of the Future Producers. So what’s been happening? Well two fantastic speakers and a pitching experience to be remembered!

After our pitching workshop the week before, we all had to take centre stage and pitch to which project we would like to be involved in. After careful deliberation I decided to pitch for Fun Palaces. I like the idea that the festival is inclusive – not just for adults or families, something my alien obsessed Grandma could attend with her friends.

Fun Palaces is exactly the kind of event I’d like to be involved in, I feel I can learn a lot from the journey and apply it to running future events. Part of the idea behind the festival is that the audiences are being asked for their visions of a Fun Palace. Audience participation in planning and programming an event is something that seems to be happening more and more. I’m interested to see how this relationship works and whether it will become key in producing similar events.

On Wednesday it was time to meet with the partners and find out what they would like to bring to Fun Palaces. It was great to meet enthusiastic individuals with creative ideas and skills.

Here are just a few:

Sci-Fi Writers
Music/Sound Producers
Game Designers
Graphic Designers

It’s really exciting to see how a collaboration like this works.

I have focused on the more playful side of Fun Palaces, speaking with Alex Latham about his ideas for a street game ‘Rusty Robots.’ I believe it’s important to push playful events like this to a mixed audience. It’s something that people are starting to encounter and it will be interesting to see who will get involved. Another partner for Fun Palaces is Fred Iles. Fred has developed an interactive space themed computer game, the only aim being you drift through space. This would look great on a screen in the foyer or up on a projector.

As I sign off I will leave you with an animation by the very talented Lily Joyce…

 

Total Recall

So it was the launch of the programme this weekend.

Stepping through the Watershed doors I had no idea what to expect, but I saw this as a good thing and decided to immerse myself into whatever the weekend would throw at me.

After an introduction to the course and a challenge involving marshmallows and spaghetti, we had our first speaker Sarah Ellis . Ellis is a digital producer of the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was really inspiring to hear how passionate she was about her job.

After a fantastic lunch we had a workshop with Tom Metcalfe. This showed us how to quickly turn out loads of ideas and create a simple prototype using Vine. A really useful session for helping to explain ideas to others – something I have struggled with in the past.

The second day involved a lot of activities such as using the Challenge Off app and playing sci-fi themed Pictionary. After lunch we had an intense pitching workshop. This two hour workshop was a great way to learn hints and tips as well as confront your fears of public speaking. For me my greatest fear is running out of things to say and my mind going completely blank. As well as a fear of not making people laugh, as I enjoy using humour in front of an audience. During the workshop we had to plan a 1 minute pitch – I decided to tackle the tricky issue of how the Fairy Liquid company had changed their bottle shape.

So far this course has really got me thinking about who I am, what my skills are and where I want to be in the future. I’m really keen to produce live events and enjoy the challenges and journeys you go though to make them happen. I feel really honoured to be on the Future Producers course, and having this chance to make something exciting happen.

Being surrounded by such a talented group of people, I can’t wait to see what work we produce.

Bring on next weekend!