An international creative technology and digital art partnership linking schools through project-based learning, teacher collaboration and shared activities.

A Creative Connection Between the UK and Malaysia

Digital Canvas is an international creative learning project bringing together educators and children in the UK and Malaysia through creative technology, digital art and play.

At its heart is a simple question:

What happens when we use technology to help children communicate with people whose lives may be very different from their own?

The project brings together the experience of Digital Writes CIC and Play Square, our Malaysian partners.

Together, we will develop activities that enable children to make, experiment, communicate and share across cultures.

We will be working with young people who have experience of disadvantage, additional educational needs or other barriers to participation. We want creative technology to become a means of widening participation rather than, as is often the case, another barrier. Children will not need to be confident coders, accomplished writers or fluent speakers of another language to contribute their ideas and creative expression: colour, light, images, movement, interaction will all be means to making digital artworks.

This will be a reciprocal relationship. UK and Malaysian educators will learn from one another, and children on both sides of the partnership will be creators with something worthwhile to share.

Different strengths, shared learning

The project brings together different skills, ideas and cultural perspectives from the UK and Malaysia.

Digital Writes brings experience in **creative technology and project-based learning**, while Play Square brings expertise in **playful and game-based approaches to learning**. By working together, we can explore how these different approaches complement each other and develop new ways of engaging children.

Learning through doing

Throughout the project, educators in both countries will meet regularly, share ideas, develop activities and learn from how children respond in each setting. The children themselves will also contribute ideas and help shape what we create.

Sharing what we learn

This exchange will produce practical activities and teaching resources that combine what both partners have learned. We will share examples of children’s work and approaches that other teachers can adapt using affordable, reusable technology.

We want teachers who encounter the project to come away thinking: “We could try that.”

Technology with Purpose

The underlying technology has deliberately been chosen to be understandable, adaptable and accessible to young people. In particular, children will be able to create work in their own country and send it across the world to be displayed in another.

They will use the Canvas to create and exchange pixel art, animations and simple games, learning about coding and creative technology through making things that have an immediate audience.

Because the equipment is reusable and adaptable, both partners will also be able to explore new creative uses for it as their skills and confidence develop.

The important thing is not the technology itself, but what children and educators in the UK and Malaysia create with it together.

The technology provides the toolkit. The participants provide the meaning.

 A Global Idea

The UK and Malaysia partnership provides a starting point for a concept designed with a much wider future in mind.

The combination of creative technology, artistic exchange and collaborative game play could provide a model for connecting young people in many different countries and communities.

A future Digital Canvas network might enable schools, youth organisations or community groups to establish their own connected devices. Each location could retain its own identity while participating in shared international activities.

• One location might invite another to represent something distinctive about its culture through a piece of digital artwork
• Another might create a challenge that travels from country to country, gathering new ideas as they go
• Games might involve several locations contributing information, decisions or actions towards a shared outcome

The common technological platform creates a space in which cultural differences can be discovered, expressed and celebrated.

A colour can have different associations. Weather and landscapes differ. Daily routines differ. Festivals, foods, languages, wildlife and local concerns differ. Even approaches to play and problem-solving may reveal interesting contrasts.

Those differences become creative material.

The project therefore explores a model of international digital collaboration that is both technologically achievable and deeply human. Relatively simple, affordable creative technology can give young people an immediate connection with another part of the world and with real people who are creating, wondering, playing and responding alongside them.

At its simplest, the Digital Canvas enables a young person to make something and know:

Someone, somewhere in another country, is going to see something I created today.