Birmingham's highly established Maker Monday returns online with leading speakers from the worlds of creativity and technology on Monday 31st January 6-7pm.

We're truly excited to welcome the amazing experimental theatre company The Other Way Works

The Other Way Works reinvent the way people engage with theatre, using real-world spaces and emerging technologies. A female-led organisation based in Birmingham, the company makes work which tours across the UK.

The Other Way Works develop and implement new theatre techniques, including immersive experiences, site-specific performances, gameplay and technology-driven storytelling that gives the audience agency within the performance.

Their work encourages human understanding and empathy by offering alternative perspectives on the world in order to provoke positive action to create lasting change.

Join us for the next Maker Monday and maybe you'll be part of the action too on the 31st. More details to come.

theotherwayworks.co.uk | @otherwayworks

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Green Shoots - The Other Ways Works

Interactive theatre company The Other Way Works will share learning from a research and development period on new project, Green Shoots. Green Shoots is a new interactive experience for children 7-11 and their grandparents on the climate emergency.

Working with Regents Park Primary School in Small Heath the company have developed a story featuring children in inner-city Birmingham living with the direct effects of climate change. The work is co-authored by these children, predominantly of South Asian heritage living in areas of the city where the level of air toxicity is high but car ownership is low, provoking a conversation about who is invited into the debate around climate and who is paying its true cost.

Fusing theatre practice with game design, software development and verbatim informed writing, the project sees a proof-of-concept excerpt developed as a trailblazer for the full experience. The company share the joys and pitfalls of this iterative, collaborative and participatory process. Artistic Director Katie Day is joined by Game Designer & Developer John Sear and Writer Sudha Bhuchar.

The Project: Green Shoots

Green Shoots is a new narrative interactive experience for children and their grandparents addressing the climate emergency. The experience sees a primary-aged child and their grandparent work together as a team through a series of puzzle-based games, online content, and a physical storybook to unlock a story and open up a conversation on a future shaped by climate breakdown.

Green Shoots features a story grounded in the lived experience of a group of children experiencing the impacts of the climate crisis. Explored through a climate justice lens, immediate, tangible, local issues such as illegally poor air quality will provide a gateway to finding a connection to the global climate movement. The experience will open up opportunities for collaborative intergenerational problem solving between children and grandparents, and invite visioning of positive green futures.

The Creative Team

Katie Day is Artistic Director of The Other Way Works, developing work where theatre meets new technologies with the aim of creating magical, immersive experiences. In this role she develops new concepts and directs the creative processes and productions. Katie is also a 2021/22 BOM (Birmingham Open Media) Fellow, a regular speaker at conferences and events, a visiting lecturer on various University courses, and a producer of professional development programmes.

John Sear is a freelance award-winning games developer who has left the ‘triple-A’ industry to focus on the creation of very high quality digital experiences for both research and the cultural & heritage sector. John is not limited by technology and develops independent of platform producing software for iOS, Android, Windows working with tablets, large-screen projection, giant touch-tables, Kinect cameras and Oculus Rift headsets. John won the prestigious Developer’s Choice Award at Indiecade 2012 (often described as the Sundance of the Games Industry) for his giant public space game Renga. He recently completed an online live murder mystery experience for Newark Museum of Art, in the US.

Sudha Bhuchar is a British Asian actor, playwright, and co-founder of the Tamasha Theatre Company. She is best known for Tamasha's Balti Kings (1999) + A Fine Balance (2005), as well as numerous screenplays for television and film. Bhuchar's playwriting and producing work focuses on the stories of British Asians with the goal of attracting culturally and ethnically diverse audiences. Her acting credits include films Mogul Mowgli + Mary Poppins Returns.

Images from except Illustration by Jim Rogers

Images from sessions Research sessions at Regents Park Primary, Small Heath & CAP Centre, Sandwell

About Maker Monday

Twitter @Maker_Monday; Insta: makermonday #MakerMonday.

Maker Monday is a highly established event based in Birmingham, UK and powered by STEAMhouse, a new centre for innovation and creation. Uniting talented people from different backgrounds in the arts, science, technology, engineering and maths – the STEAM sectors – to bring amazing new ideas to life.

For all queries regarding Maker Monday, please contact Maker Monday organiser- Tim Wilson - hello@timmy666.com / @timmy666

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About STEAMhouse

www.steamhouse.org.uk | Insta steamhouse_uk | Twitter @STEAMhouseUK | Facebook @STEAMhouseUK | LinkedIn @STEAMhouse

Created in partnership with Eastside Projects and funded by the European Regional Development Fund and Arts Council England, we’re driving innovation and research for major long-term growth across the region. Bringing inventors, entrepreneurs, businesses and craftspeople together to develop exciting new ideas and products.

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Maker Monday will return

Our next face-to-face event will be on Monday 25th February 6-7.30pm at the Eagle and Bull in Brimingham. Speakers tba.