The "Creative Coding School" seeks to engage refugees and other socially disadvantaged people in learning how to create digital products, and thus also taking part in the digital transformation in Germany. Special attention is paid to children, as they tend to be both more open to learning and have greater impact in their families.
By 2022, it is estimated that 20 billion devices such as sensors, security cameras, vehicles, production machines and everyday objects will be networked together in the Internet of Things (IoT). The knowledge gained from this connectivity will give rise to the emergence of new services and applications that will change and simplify our lives. The Internet of Things is thus one of the most important technological innovation drivers, and already one of the key markets for young entrepreneurs.
In the workshop, participants will learn basic skills to independently master digital challenges and to find their own creative solutions to problems. We will experiment with various technologies and materials, and provide participants with an overview of programming and digital tools, with which they can independently create their own inventions. Participants will be equipped with all the necessary knowledge and skills in order to unleash their creativity. Through the transfer of knowledge in various areas of the "Internet of Things", the participants will receive a broad picture of the possibilities of modern technologies and their applications.
We deliver our workshops in two distinct formats, depending on the target audience. In each of these formats, we aim for a mix of participants, allowing for better cultural exchange and stimulated creativity:
Everyone has a smartphone, yet many of us don’t use its full potential. We bridge the gap between the huge demand of creatively skilled technologists and the hunger for social contacts that newcomers to our society face. They have the potential to invent new ways to connect, solve problems and create innovations. We help them to achieve it.
Supported by
Neues Deutschland and
Friedrichshain hilft e.V.
The future is digital! Technology is in every part of life. Through learning to use technology creatively, children can shape their own future. Beyond IT skills, programming and hacking hardware, they develop also teamwork, creativity and media skills.
Supported by
House of Resources,
Akademie für Ehrenamtlichkeit Deutschland,
Joliba interkulturelles Netzwerk in Berlin e.V.,
Bundesministerium des Inneren and
Friedrichshain hilft e.V.
In the workshop you will learn the principles of creative programming, but also to blend logic with creativity and to master new approaches to problem solving. Typically, the school consists of 10 weekly workshop sessions, with possible variations driven by participant special needs:
In an informal conversation get to know us and introduce yourself. Discuss what brings us together and how each of us can take the best out of the experience.
Learn how to set yourself in a mindset to solve problems and direct your creativity. Master various techniques that would help you focus and surprise yourself with creative solutions.
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On the web you can talk to anyone or anything, but you need to speak many languages. HTML, CSS, SVG, JavaScript, JSON, XHR, SQL,... there is help.
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Start speaking the language of technologies. Start thinking in terms of explicit instructions to make sure you are able to make digital tools follow your orders.
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Introduce advanced control of your product. Take advantage of digital and remote instructions to provide it with basic intelligence.
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How can you read numbers, find patterns in them, use them to make decision? Get to explore data and tell stories about it.
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Take advantage of machine accuracy for the preparation of you custom product.Cut or mold rigid materials, so that your product is precisely manufactured and durable.
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A day visit to Fablab Berlin in the Open Innovation Space and an opportunity to produce any objects that you would have prepared.
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Always be ready to show a work-in-progress version of your product. Get early feedback and make changes as early as possible to make sure you don't loose too much of your work.
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One step at a time, make sure that the different part of your planned project work separately. Then start combining them to see how they connect to do what you want them to do.
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Make sure that you have a self-contained minimal viable product that is enough for people to understand the idea behind your project.
In a final exhibition after the workshops, you will have the opportunity to present yourself and your own results both to the rest of the group and to the broader public.
You will learn both analog and digital creative methods and programming basics. You will work with Processing, HTML5, Javascript, Python, C++ and many other tools. In addition, you will develop hardware prototypes in the fields of Robotics or Wearables that can be controlled with the help of modern microcontroller technologies like Arduino and learn how to create your own physical models through Digital Fabrication techniques such as 3D printing. Through the diverse exposure to various technologies and applications you can discover your individual preferences and learn your preferred topics and techniques and be part of the Maker scene.
Leading figures in the field of creative technologies will provide participants with innovative knowledge for successful development of new applications in the Internet of Things in tailored hands-on workshop sessions. The mentors and teachers of the project "Creative Coding School" were and are precursors of future technologies in Germany and have extensive experience with knowledge in their respective fields.
Anke is a curator and media artist with an interdisciplinary biography. She started her studies in Visual Communication and Product Design at the Bauhaus University Weimar. She also studies Architecture and Urban Design at TU Berlin and Tongji University in Shanghai and worked on a research project on Intermedia Art at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Currenlty she works on her PhD research with the topic “Narrating the public space through media interventions”. She worked for many years at the Institute for Information Design in Japan and presented her art in Japan, South Korea, India, China and Germany. In 2013 and 2014 she curated and produced “Genius Loci Weimar – a festival of facade projections. ”She was a researcher at TU Berlin on the topic of Smart Cities and since 2013 is an associate professor in the domains of MediaArchitecture and Human-Computer Interaction in Bauhaus-University Weimar.
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Julian studied mechatronics. However, he found engineering jobs to be too boring and too well-paid. Because of that in the recent years he works on robotic arts as Sonice Development. He also set up and established the retune festival in Berlin. Julian has experience with electronics, Arduino and sensors, C++ development with openFrameworks, some Raspberry Pi and can use CAD software.
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Martin is a researcher and practitioner on the topic of learning. He has 15 years of experience in teaching for the academic, commercial and non-profit sectors. He wrote his thesis at University College London in the domain Technology Enhanced Learning and Serious Games. Currently he is a software engineer of a Virtual Learning Environment used by National Offender Management Services in the UK. He is also engaged in two startups. On one hand he is the Product Manager of a vocabulary learning app which supports European and Middle Eastern languages. On the other, he is the Head of Training of an online learning provider. More information and links are available on his LinkedIn profile.
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Matthias is a merchant for audio-visual media, studied business communication at HTW Berlin, is a serial entrepreneur and Refugee Camp Manager. He worked for the German Television ZDF, started the company Nagual Sounds in 2012, for which he is also the Chief Marketing Officer, and founded the initiative “Friedrichshain hilft” in 2015 through which he got the opportunity to establish and manage a refugee camp in Berlin. With Nagual Sounds he developed a unique method to convert any kind of data streams in real-time into tonal music. The first product Nagual Dance allows users to create his own individual song through body movement in front of a motion-tracking camera. The second product Nagual Sense, an App for the IPhone, lets users create music, using just the inbuilt Gyro and Accelerator sensor. Through the journey, he spoke on various panels like Music Summit Miami, Collision Conference Las Vegas, Bug Future Show Zagreb, Music Tech Fest Paris, Berlin Music Week and Tech Open Air Berlin. He won several international awards like the SXSW New Media Product Award, the Midem Startup Award, Design-prize Berlin-Brandenburg and the Kreativpiloten Award by Creative Economy Department of the Federal Government of Germany. Through his work as refugee camp manager, he gained deep insight for the needs and challenges of the people who had to flee from terror in their Heimat and arrived in Germany. Right now, Matthias works on projects and solutions to create opportunities for a successful integration of refugees, collaborating with exceptional artists and inventors of future technologies.
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Moritz is an architect, interaction designer and researcher combining architecture with digital technologies to explore the notion of architecture within mediated urban spaces. Previously, as part of the EPSRC funded ’Screens in the Wild’ project at the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture (London), he conducted intense research into urban screens for community purposes. More recently and in collaboration with Arup, Moritz designed and deployed the interactive 'Sentiment Cocoon', which collects the feelings of building occupants and visualises them through the medium of light evolving from a light-weight translucent structure. Amongst others his interactive media installations have been invited by 'Verve Cultural' (Sao Paulo) and the EU funded 'Connecting Cities’ (Berlin), displayed at the 'Ars Electronica Festival' (Linz) and produced for the European Capital of Culture 2014 (Riga, Latvia). More information about his works can be found at moritzbehrens.com.
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Nina is an Interaction Design researcher und practitioner, and is interested with topics at the intersection between Technology, Creativity and Society. Researcher by training and media artist and creative coder by passion, Nina holds an MSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Darmstadt University of Technology and a PhD in Interaction Design from University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. Since more than 14 years, she has been collaborating in various projects in the field of interface and interaction design, computer graphics, mixed reality and new media arts at the Fraunhofer Center for Computer Graphics (Darmstadt, Germany), Ars Electronica Future Lab (Linz, Austria), the Synthetic Perceptive Emotive and Cognitive Systems Group and the Groups for Interactive and Music Technologies at the University Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain). Currently, Nina holds a position as a Senior Researcher at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID), where she leads a hands-on investigation line on the topics of creative learning and making in STEAM subjects and the role of interactive technologies to support this.
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Patrick is a computer scientist that is working in the space of big data and machine learning. He received a PhD from the University of Stuttgart, where he conducted research on predictive algorithms to optimize data acquisition in mobile sensor networks. After that time, he joined the Zalando data science team where he is focussing on the processing and analysis of big data sets.
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René is a computer-scientists and PhD candidate at RWTH Aachen University. His research is in the field of new user interfaces and interaction techniques for 3D-printers and other digital fabrication technologies at home. He was the manager of Germany’s first FabLab in Aachen since its opening in the year 2009. He is well known in the Wearable Computing and Smart Fashion community for his book “Making Things Wearable”, published at O’Reilly as the first German book about this topic. He is an author for transcript, heise, and MAKE magazine. René published his work under open licenses and he supports open source for software and hardware. Among his best known projects are the VisiCut software for lasercutters, and the FabScan 3D-scanner. He gives workshops about Arduino and Raspberry Pi or a compact introduction into Wearables and Personal Fabrication. More information: rene-bohne.de
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Stanimir graduated from TU Berlin and obtained a PhD in Machine Learning and Robotics from Universität Stuttgart. His research -- in robotic grasping, uncertain physical interaction, object representations -- was funded by the Honda Research Institute Europe. Currently, as a Data Scientist for the fashion platform Zalando he develops Machine Learning solutions for fraud detection. He is passioned about artificial intelligence, privacy, social implications of technology, free (as in free speech, not free beer) and minimalist technology, photography, hacking with Linux shell, C, Scala, Python, etc.
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Tomek is a interaction designer from Berlin, working in the scope of interactive installations, physical prototyping and generative graphics. His key focus is in exploring and orchestrating new forms of interaction with technology in physical space. He is interested in creating rich and playful experiences. He holds a Diploma (equiv. to M.A.) degree in communication design from Potsdam University of Applied Sciences. In the past Thomas showed his work, taught or worked for, among others: medialab Madrid, Venice Biennale of Architecture, Berlinische Galerie, Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), Ars Electronica, CIID (Copenhagen), Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, Google ATAP, Audi, HP, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Philharmonie Berlin and Shanghai Symphony Hall.
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