Northsider graduates from Digital Hub as a Future Creator

TEENAGER Cillian O’Sullivan (14), from St Paul’s School, Brunswick Street, Dublin 7 was one of a new generation of innovators formally welcomed into the digital community last week.

The 14-year-old local was attending an event to mark the graduation of the latest group of young people completing The Digital Hub’s Future Creators programme.

Each participant received a number of digital badges to recognise the range of new skills and knowledge they have developed over the past six months.

Digital badges are becoming popular in the digital world as an indicator of accomplishment, skill and quality for learners in many fields.

The graduates will have a digital record of their learning journey through Future Creators and they can share this with third level institutions and future employers to illustrate the range of skills and competences they developed in the programme. 

The Digital Hub anticipates that Future Creators will add to their initial collection of badges over time.

Established in 2011, by The Digital Hub and delivered with the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) and H2 Learning, the Future Creators programme aims to equip young people from the local community with a set of digital and STEM skills.

These include animation, coding, game making and design, sound manipulation, music technology, filmmaking, and electronics. 

“All of us are proud of celebrating the success of the latest graduates of the Future Creators programme,” said Digital Hub CEO Fiach Mac Conghail.

“Our commitment to innovation, creativity and STEAM subjects, we hope, will contribute to the personal and educational development of these gifted young people.”

Professor Sarah Glennie, Director, NCAD, said the Future Creators project was a “very important element” of NCAD’s community engagement strategy. 

“For the past five years staff and students from our Fine Art Media, Product Design and School of Education departments have contributed to the development of this exciting and innovative project,” she said.

“The Future Creators have had the opportunity to come to NCAD and participate in studio-based workshops in the development of their ideas.

“This project enables the Future Creators to bring together art design and digital media and technology in the realisation of their group projects.”

This year’s Future Creators students were given the chance to develop their knowledge and skills through active participation in a series of creative project based learning tasks. 

All the students’ work was on display at a special exhibition in The Digital Hub’s Digital Exchange building, to coincide with the graduation.

 Some of this year’s projects include students designing and building a light box, breadboarding, soldering and coding on Adafruit GEMMA microcontroller using Arduino IDE

 Other young participants have been involved in building a motorized 3D-printed character called Zelda Breath of The Wild, which has been brought to life using a motor and LEDs.

This year’s Future Creators class consisted of 11 boys and seven girls who took part in the programme, from a variety of schools across the city.