Maker Monday x Ars Electronica: Digital Empowerment, designing with empathy

Birmingham's highly established Maker Monday event teams up with Ars Electronica for a special workshop as part of this year's Ars Electronica Festival - A New Digital Deal.

In this interactive session, our amazing special guests Sharon Brunt and Kelly Vero will explore what empathy is and how to use it to design everything from apps, tool and games that are sensitive to users needs, and uplift their lives. You will have the opportunity to gauge your own empathy, and go away with a deeper understanding of how you can use it to fuel your creativity.

Bios

Sharon Brunt - Chief Activist & Founder, Be More Girl.

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sharonbrunt wearemoregirl.com

Twitter | Insta: hellobemoregirl

Sharon runs Be More Girl, a social impact consultancy helping brands to serve women and girls better. Sharon is a purpose-driven strategist with three decades of experience in brand, communications and innovation, in both B2C and B2B markets.

Sharon has worked with some of the world’s largest companies, from Unilever to GSK, and on some of the world’s most famous brands, from Maltesers to Mini; as well as many challenger brands and start-ups. A passionate advocate for social and environmental change, Sharon believes in championing women because it’s what the world needs right now.

Kelly Vero

Skype | Twitter | Insta | Clubhouse: electricgeisha

Crafting a career in game development for over 25 years, Kelly has worked on some of the world's most famous franchises. Working at the top flight of video games has presented an increasing demand for understanding the gamification of concepts in other verticals from fashion and industrial to learning technologies and entertainment. She loves pushing technology to its emergent edge through education, sustainability, and imagination. Kelly works around these verticals to educate, produce and develop the growth of new technologies in a changing world.

Kelly has worked on a wide range of games including the Tomb Raider series, Transformers and Candy Crush, she has worked with Adidas, Fila, Puma and on various LVMH projects for gamified products and services. Kelly invests in small games projects with other games professionals at FinPlay AG.

She is Chief Creative Officer at Dazlus AG: an AR Experience Studio based in Zurich, Switzerland and runs Core Game - a small digital agency specialising in gamification.

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

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.

About Ars Electronica - New Digital Deal.

Financial crisis, refugee crisis, Corona crisis, climate crisis. Without falling into alarmism here – the chronicle of the still young 21st century is a wake-up call. The social, economic and ecological dislocations that herald the approaching “limits to growth” are becoming ever more apparent. It is quite clear what our future will look like if we carry on as before. Admittedly, this does not seem tempting.

In 2021, Ars Electronica is therefore calling for a „New Digital Deal“. Not a 1,000-page agreement negotiated by “experts” behind closed doors. No. What we’re talking about is a completely new way of dealing with our problems that presupposes two things: Room for initiative, which we urgently demand, and the ability to act, which we just as urgently need to acquire. The time for playing around is over once and for all. It’s time to put our money where our mouth is; it’s time for the “New Digital Deal”…

In 2021, the festival will once again be held not only in Linz but at more than 100 locations around the world. Numerous partner institutions are once again participating with on-site events as well as a broad spectrum of online offerings: STEAMhouse in Birmingham, MIT in Boston, an entire arts and culture network in Barcelona, BOZAR in Brussels, the Onassis Foundation in Greece, the University of Auckland & Victoria and the University of Wellington in New Zealand, the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Culture, and many others.

You can take part in the dense program of digital events from Ars Electronica and its partners with an online ticket that can be purchased here for €9.

You can also get a preview of some of our festival program on our Inside Festival series.