As part of British Council’s 70th anniversary celebration, we launched a second digital call wherein we wanted to use our 70th year to capture the many stories and collective memories of our work since 1948 and ensure that we are seen as relevant to the needs of young people across India today. The aim was to get brilliant, creative, digital ideas to match our ambitions to excite and inspire millions of young people across India.
As part of the second Digital call following are the 5 digital Arts projects that got selected:
1. CHANGING SPACES is a digital creative project which uses the mobile to take images from the past of places people experience every day, to elevate them into consciousness as places we, our friends, families and ancestors have known for decades and to create a digital piece of art which marks this period in time.
2. DARA is a friendly, human way to enable connections amongst British and Indian artists, highlighting key interests, areas and persons for potential collaboration that artists might not have realised existed. This chatbot, Dara (or “thread” in the Indic language, Kannada), will offer users a selection of personalities modeled on dialects, cultural references and language nuances from selected regions of each country.
3. STREET PLAYER is a global music discovery channel, run by Livity, a youth-led creative network. As part of the India project a series of music videos will be made that showcase the best of the coolest Indian tracks and some fascinating & iconic locations; alongside a short documentary that explores the idea of mutual cultural exchange between the UK and India in the 21st century. They will also run workshops for young people on socialising content to help with the production of creative content.
4. HELLO LAMP POST India is an interactive project where participants can interact with objects scattered around the city (4 Indian Cities) and start playful conversations with the urban environment (bus stops, benches etc). Participants will be able to start an SMS or facebook messenger conversation with each object – the objects will have a personality and interest that reflects a theme.
5. PLATFORM is a project that enable people to use their own drawings or photos and easily create highly visual, interactive story-based platform online games. Anybody with creative aspirations and an idea for a game can create, collaborate and widely share them. It does not require professional input at any stage in the process, so is open to mass participation.
