The Project This project aims to develop innovative curriculum strategies, based on the new knowledge and experiences digital culture can offer young people. By investigating a range of learning situations, the project suggests how the informal styles of learning that characterise young people’s out-of-school experiences with technology can be drawn upon and developed in schools. The project involves piloting, documenting and evaluating new approaches to creative teaching and learning, using digital media. The core of the project is three curriculum initiatives, which have taken place in the informal, out-of-school setting of WAC Performing Arts and Media College, a well-established centre for lifelong learning in the arts and media in North London. The three projects included a cyber-cafe for 3-13 year olds as well as parents/carers in the WAC community; a course for 9-13 year olds making computer games; and a chatroom project for 10 – 15 year old girls. Our key questions were as follows: How do young people learn and develop their creative abilities in relation to new media? What does ‘informal learning’ look like in practice? How do young people move from being ‘consumers’ to being ‘producers’ of media? How can their passive knowledge be ‘activated’ through creative production? What is the specific potential of this kind of creative work for socially disadvantaged groups? What is the ‘added value’ here? How can new technologies build bridges between home and school, or leisure and learning? The Shared Spaces project is running from October 2001 to December 2002. In the final phase of the project, we will be holding two invited seminars and a teacher training event (click here to go to EVENTS page). The project is based at the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media at the Institute of Education, University of London and is funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust.				Further Links: The Official Proposal (pdf) WAC Performing Arts and Media College See where the activities and data collection took place. Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media More information about where the research project is based.