Graham Dean a fellow HighWire student has brought life to Eric Morcambe’s statue in Morcambe Bay. By providing contextual information gathered from APIs about local Morcambe weather and writing code to construct tweets in the first person to make it more lifelike Graham has enabled Eric, or rather Eric’s statue to tweet about the weather. Richard Wood of HighWire has also created a tweet stream from Islambard Kingdom Brunel.

A HighWire forum with Monika Buscher, Daria Loi, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonisino & Lucy Suchman took place this week. Opening with an introduction by Monika we proceeded to discuss innovation.

Alexandra CEO of Tinker.it spoke of the Arduino chip and the growing community of tinkerers who engage in projects using this chip.

‘Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.’ Arduino

This platform is interesting to consider in terms of democratising innovation, the community which grows around it provides a source of support and information for individuals working on projects using the chip, and the open source chip facilitates innovative use. Within this elements of participatory design, collaborative design and prototying emerge.

I have been involved in an exciting new approach to research recently, culminating in a £4 million grant for the EPSRC to develop cross disciplinary research projects that cross between design, computing and management. As a result, Lancaster University’s new Doctoral Training Scheme, HighWire, has begun recruiting students.

HighWire will to create a new breed of PhD student though the development of a post-disciplinary approach to research that focuses on problems rather than conventional subject areas or disciplines) we are also placing innovation at the heart of its curriculum and ethos, something I’m a serial poster about here. The scheme will provide funding (bursary and enhanced stipend) for 50 PhD students over 5 years.

We are running a recruitment event in Lancaster on the 11th of March with another later in the year. More information on the scheme and the event are available on the HighWire website.