This week, the UK participants of Recife:The Playable City along with some brilliant members of the Studio team flew to Brazil for the second part of the lab, we watch with bated breath as Hello Lamp Post gets through to the second round of the Social Vote for Designs of the Year 2014, and we welcome two new residents into our midst. Read on to find out more...

iShed Director Clare, Creative Technologist David and Producer Victoria have flown to Brazil to embark on the sunnier second part of Recife: The Playable City, an initiative which brings creative practitioners from Brazil UK, to exchange ideas and develop new works that respond to the theme of The Playable City. Have a look at the participants’ blogs here, and keep an eye on the Playable City Twitter, but prepare to be a bit green-eyed when looking at their sun-drenched instagrams. Studio residents Rosie, Tine, Phil and Laura are among the cohort.

Last year’s Playable City Award winner, Hello Lamp Post has won the first round of the Designs of the Year Social Vote. It was up against some stiff competition; the hugely popular and brilliant Lego Calendar by Vitamins. Keep your eye on their website to see how it fares in the next round.

Resident Tim Kindberg has been invited to present and demo Nth Screen at Sheffield Doc Fest this June, and we have just found out that this year’s start-up residents, ANAGRAM have also been commissioned to install their Door Into the Dark immersive documentary at the event.

Studio Producer Verity and our Projects Co-ordinator Jess went up to Future Everything in Manchester last weekend to talk about Playable City. The festival was themed around the notion of ‘tools for unknown futures’, and brought together over 700 international delegates for a series of talks, performances and discussions. Verity will be posting a blog about the festival very soon.

This week, REACT Producer Matt was mentoring at South West Crucible, an initiative to bring over 30 mid-career academics from Bristol and Bath together to look at ways of engaging the public with their research. In a bid to share their work with the public, the participants will be laying their research out on tables outside the Watershed in June, for people to peruse, ice cream in hand.

Calvium have just finished working with lighting engineers, Danlers on ControlZapp; an energy saving application, which allows you to control lighting from your phone. Other big Calvium news is that we have two new residents; Charlie Harman and Danielle Vass who have permanently joined the Calvium team. Charlie is Calvium’s new marketing manager. No stranger to the Pervasive Media Studio, in 2012 Charlie took part in the Watershed's Future Producers Programme where she took an interest in digital marketing techniques, particularly within the arts. Danielle is one of Calvium’s new developers, and she is on a mission to do something about the gender imbalance in the world of programming. She is currently hosting a coding after school club at an all girls school in Bath. We’re very happy to have both of them join us in the Studio.