New blog, lets see what’s been going on…
Peckham Digital is 3!
The third Peckham Digital took place 18 - 21st July 2024! Our biggest programme to date, we maxed out the number of talks and workshops we could fit into the Hub and Staffordshire Street, and ended up hosting a workshop at SET Social as well.
It went very smoothly (some late water ingress issues aside). Returning to the same venues helped a lot, and it was great to catch up with some of the security and cleaning staff at the Hub from last year (everyone remembered us!).
I met some great people, always the highlight - a few in no particular order: Artists: Freddie Hong, Erin Robinson, Ieva Vaiti, Daisy Chiu, Connor Turansky, Xiangyu Wang, Sami Malle; Facilitators: James Rutherford, Paul Robert Lloyd, Catherine Mason, John Richards; Musicians: Graham Dunning, Lucy Cheesman (Heavy Lifting), James Walker (collapse), Amina (MYNA), Eli (+777000) and Skip (nunez). Thanks also to Oliver for being the best sound engineer, and Loki for technical support throughout.
The Saturday music programme at Staffordshire St was great. All the workshops were fab - John’s DIY synthesisers, Graham’s mechanical techno, Lucy’s approaches to ‘from scratch’ live coding - and I loved the algorave, inc. Lucy and Graham’s live coding vs mechanical techno b2b, which was my favourite part of the festival.
We had some great volunteers who really stepped up and made the whole festival very inviting for attendees - a huge thanks to them - and we had great support from Ella who was super helpful throughout. It was also wonderful seeing a big turnout for the BSL tour led by Chisato.
There were a good few returning faces in the audience this year, which hopefully means we’re doing something right, and we had great feedback throughout, which makes it all worthwhile (as organisers, we never get to go to anything ourselves which makes this feedback so important).
From a personal perspective, I was able to do more this year and felt that was a good marker in my ongoing recovery from ME/CFS. I’m deeply grateful to have been able to be there in person. A few of my friends also came to visit, which was ace!
A Maze Sheffield
On the 2nd Aug, the Berlin based games festival A Maze came to Sheffield for a one day festival which I managed to attend. I really liked it; a stylish setup in a converted warehouse, very nice exhibiting indie games / playful experiences and a friendly vibe throughout (and wheelchair accessible!). I played Between, an great game that works through collaborative touch, with the creator herself, Claire Kwong, who talked me through her innovative approach to using touch as a controller mechanism, and bringing people (including strangers) together through this.
I went to a fantastic Making Music with Strudel for Beginners workshop run by Lucy Cheesman and Ray Morrison. Strudel is a web based version of TidalCycles, a live coding language developed by Alex McLean (another Sheffield illuminary - it’s a hub!), and I love how immediate and full of creative possibilities it is, and there’s a really positive and welcoming live coding scene. I’m hoping to get good enough to join the lineup at a gig at some point… watch this space.
Up next, Peckham Digital will be back on Oct 26th for a one-off music day, so that’s in the works atm.
Catch you soon,
Matt
