Last week was our (and the world’s) first Digital Craft Workshop with Global People Project.  A team of 8 young people from around London came together for the week of digital crafting in the centre of London’s Soho film district.

Abdul, Francis, Jo, Lotte, Lucienne, Sam, Samar and Ushila joined me and Nils for 5 days to learn about the digital skills, techniques and principals involved in making the Global People Project’s Thought Map come alive.

We all worked really hard and the team not only learned about these digital crafts but also applied them, adding over a hundred new voices to the Thought Map! These include the first Super High Definition RED Digital Cinema material that has been shot for the project.

We worked with interviews from a shoot at the begining of August (2010) in rural Somerset, England with a RED One camera.  These interviews were shot with the help of young Abi and Francis from Somerset who helped turn a day of heavy English rain into a very successful first day of English interviews.

In the coming weeks all these voices will be activated on the Thought Map. We’ve learned loads doing this and all the experience is starting to come in handy as we plan for more shooting with RED around Tromso and Lapland in northern Norway at the beginning of next year, when we’ll be working with Sonar Films from Tromso.

This workshop was made possible with 100% funding and sponsorship from UnLtd. GlobeStream Training and DN Digital.  Thanks all for making this first Digital Craft Workshop possible, we look forward to doing many more.

More soon.

Hugh

Nevertheless Hugh and Hua sat down that night and over some Chinese tea planned the work for the next day so that they could have a chance at interviewing a good cross-section of people around the city.
Not discouraged by his doubts, Hua wanted to rearrange the interview questions in an order that he felt would be better in Shanghai and that is the order the interviews have stayed in ever since.

At 5 o’clock the next morning they went out into the dark grey dawn, ready to try and capture something of the thoughts of the people in Shanghai. The day started with a taxi-ride to the Wanhangdu Rd market.
After trying to talk to several people, Hua approached a market trader who was selling furry hats laid on a blanket by the side off the street. This trader laughed at Hua’s suggestion and was persuaded into giving an interview.

The filming started quietly enough with laughter and good humour from the market trader. Then as a crowd gathered, like a bubble of human energy, a fun, happy atmosphere grew about it. This turned out to be quite an emotional roller-coaster. As the interview continued a woman started shouting at the market trader, seeming to be quite angry towards him for talking with the camera. The atmosphere changed becoming more tense and angry, Hua stayed rock steady and kept interviewing the merchant as the crowd got bigger and louder.

Eventually with a shouting commotion around the interview the team said goodbye to the people in the market and moved on to find a group of women dancing and practicing Tai Chi in a local park. Would this be a calmer encounter…… To see the interview in this storycheck out this link.

Hope you enjoyed a little of our backstory, more tales next week! See you soon,

Xxx

The Global People Project

In April 2007, Hugh was looking for someone who could work elegantly with Flash interactivity to start realizing his ideas for the project’s Thought Map on-line. With this in mind he booked himself into a Chinwag networking event at Imperial College in London. Walking into the event he bumped into a guy called Paddy who was working with Channel 4 On-line, It turned out that Paddy knew a lot of people at the event and introduced Hugh to all sorts of website-wizardry at the party. Many cards were traded and it seemed that night many people were looking for Flash talent but few people were actually in that line of work.
Eventually after many interesting encounters and a fine night out with Paddy and his friends Hugh and everyone else went home.
It seemed that this wasn’t going to answer the project’s need for a web development wizard.

A few days later Hugh received an email from a man called Adam he’d met briefly through Paddy at the Chinwag event. That night Adam had said he’d worked with some great Flash developers in the past and might send on some contact details.
Adam very kindly remembered this and sent two introductions to the Flash developers he had in mind.
One of them was Nils. Hugh and Nils met up and after talking it through decided this was something they could make happen. Nils had all the enthusiasm and personality Hugh was looking for and with his great skills in Flash development he was able to take the project to the next level and start to realize the Thought Map.
Nils said in the beginning that if he was to get involved, he wanted to get really involved and make things happen. This was music to Hugh’s ears, and with Nils on board the Global People Project went on to be set up as a social enterprise.
Nils says: ”I was practically hooked on GPP after browsing the content for about 5 minutes. The different answers from such a diverse range of people were intriguing and made me want to explore further and further. At the time, the project was also in need of technical support, so it seemed like an ideal opportunity to contribute my skills. It has since become a fun, fascinating and challenging journey, both technically and in terms of setting up and running a non-profit organisation.” The result of this co-operation you can see by taking a look at out website. www.globalpeopleproject.net.

More from and about our team coming soon.

Global People Project
XXX

Jia Jia Liu is doing an excellent job translating the GPP interviews recorded in Shanghai into English for the Thought Map.

Translating interviews recorded in foreign languages is a big bottleneck when it comes to processing interviews, so if you feel you can help, please do get in touch. You’d be part of a friendly team contributing to an exciting project.

Welcome to the Global People Project’s blog!
The GPP has for a long time been a dream for the founder, Hugh Lewis. We are now a steadily growing team working together to make snippets of people’s thoughts from all around the world universally accessible online. Why? Because we truly believe that a better understanding and knowledge about other people from various cultures will make the world a better and more interesting place! In this first blog we will introduce you to the project and to the founder, Hugh.

So, what exactly is the Global People Project? We really want you to check out the GPP Thought Map yourself! However, cut to the point GPP presents a Thought Map that is an evolving, interactive space about human thought and the World. It is made up of video answers to questions that let you  explore core human values; like: ”What makes you happy?”,  ”Which people are violent?” and ”What human activity gives you hope for the future?” Here is a short video that explains how you can enjoy it: Explore with people….

The most exciting work and development on the project will be filmed and developed over the next two or three years, starting with locations around England and Northern Norway, and as we slowly but steadily enter the production stage in many places around the world we want to invite you to come with us on this journey!

Our founder, Hugh is a documentary editor who has had the chance to live and travel around the world. His inspiration to make the GPP comes from the many people he has had the chance to spend time and talk with in different parts of the world.

Hugh says: “It strikes me that we live in a time when it’s possible for us to know about the world and other people in ways that haven’t really been achievable before and I find the possibilities that come from this deeply exciting. So here I am with Global People Project, working hard to help shape it up into the living space that it is designed to become”.

At the moment Hugh is working on putting together the first steps of the next, key stage of the project.

We hope you enjoyed getting to know us a little! Please do leave a comment if you have any questions or there is something you would like to share with us. Until next week, keep well!

XXX
The Global People Project

“I got involved in GPP at the very start – when we had no idea what people would say and even if they’d be happy to say anything.

Approaching people and asking such broad and open questions was an extraordinary experience, the responses consistently confounded my expectations and surprised my prejudices. Filming the interviews gave a short window into the private and carefully tended thoughts of other humans. I wanted to know how these would compare to people’s feelings in other places and revisited my own internal responses to the questions. My favourite response was a security guard who felt he’d most like to be like Julius Caesar or Napoleon – conquerors!

After filming it was really exciting to see the clips become part of something much bigger, great fun was working with friends like May who translated the questions for us (and my mother who translated the answers!) to help with more interviews and translations and watching the GPP grow has been thrilling. It feels like it has a life of its own now, that it’s growing under its own steam and that currents I couldn’t have expected back at the beginning send it into places that surprise me. It’s made me feel more human, less of an isolated unit in a sea of people – I can’t wait to see where it will go next.”

Tom Mustill

Hugh, the project’s founder and creative director conducted his first interview three years ago and since then has travelled to many places with his video camera. His objective was to ask people from all walks of life the same set of questions; about themselves, about other people and the world we live in.

Hugh says “I wanted to record with video how people from many different ways of life and cultures around the world think about common human themes and show these recordings in an interactive space on the Internet that can be explored by everyone.”

It was the first major step of realizing his vision for the Global People Project and its Thought Map.
His journey took him through gunfire in Kashmir, breakfast in Beverly Hills and social outcry in Shanghai. Other people have since also helped take the Global People Project’s questions from the Favelas of Sao Paulo, to the Souks of Cairo, from the streets of Berlin to various communities around Cape Town.

After returning to London from his first filming trip, Hugh went looking for help to build the Thought Map for the Project. With some kindness from strangers in the world of Internet development he met with Nils Millahn who joined him to take the project on-line and make it into the social enterprise that it is today.

Here it is, the new GPP skin!!  We’ve been working hard and fast over the last couple of days to get this up ready for the world to see tonight.

Nils, Tiki and Hanzo are still busy tapping away in a very focussed manner while I type this to test the embedded blog in our new look home page. It’s all starting to work and I for one think it’s looking really good.

We’re all excited about the next stage in the project’s development and this really marks the begining of that story.  We hope you enjoy! x