We enjoy working with people in different fields to our own, because they bring expertise that is new to us, and we have worked with art galleries, bus companies, schools, universities, community groups, health care professionals, museums, historic buildings, local authorities, national newspapers, banks, and advertising agencies among many others.

First Direct :

First Direct need to talk to and listen to their customers and be a valuable part of their everyday lives. So First Direct joined City Poems, a text message biography of Leeds written by the people who live and work there and delivered by SMS from a network of Poem Points at key venues across the city.

First Direct shared the costs of City Poems and hosted a Poem Point about work in the city. Staff from the bank took part in four creative writing workshops, showing them how even a simple text message can be a rich, poetic form of communication, and refreshing the skills with which they talked to customers and each other. City Poems was expanded to Antwerp, Belgium for the city’s World Book Capital celebrations, and was commended in the British Interactive Media Awards.

The Guardian :

More than 15 000 people entered the text message poetry competitions we designed for the Guardian in 2001 and 2002.

All the entries were sent in by text message, then whittled down to a shortlist of seven and sent back by text to everyone who entered, one poem per day for seven days, and they scored that day’s poem between 1 and 10 and sent the score to the Guardian by text.

The competition showed how strongly creativity can engage people, and how a community can be built using everyday mobile technology.

The Guardian’s text message poetry competition was one of the events that taught the mainstream media how to use text messaging, and remains one of the richest and most creative examples of how the media can harness “user generated content” to make its audience feel part of a community.

Institute of Physics and Butlins :

A cross site initiative which used mobile phones with a printed activity book designed to stimulate interest in science in the 7-12 yrs age range over Summer 2007. Echo is an alien schoolboy who has crashed his space pod at Butlins while studying the science of fun. Children and families at all three Butlins sites helped Echo to put his pod back together and fly back to the planet Fizzix in time for his tea.

Echo is an interactive story world to teach children about the physics of three Butlins rides. It is the imagination of children, and grown ups, that creates Echo and his world, and we used two portable information technologies to help them conjure it up: mobile phones and printed paper. It is Echo’s birthday tomorrow, and he’s getting a new power pad for his space pod, so he asked children (and grown ups) “If you could choose a new powerpad for my ship, what power would it have, and what would I use it for?”. This was one of our favourite answers:

I would choose a forcefield pad 2 stop my friend Echo from crashing again and make him safe. Love Alex B age 8

Manchester Passenger Transport Executive :

Bus passengers in Manchester shared memorable journeys with other travelers by text message using our Anywhereblogs mobile phone service. Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE) displayed posters for us at a total of 500 bus stops across Greater Manchester over 18 months, asking the question “Where were you happiest to arrive and why?” Passengers waiting for the bus could either add their own memory to the list or read one written by some else.

The messages sent in were happy, sad, funny and moving, and helped travelers to share a sense of community with the other people using a valuable public service. So where were you happiest to arrive and why? These were two of our favourite answers:

The 8 to Bolton every Tuesday night for a couple of pints with the lads to break the working week. Can’t beat it!

Back at the hospital the morning after my little girl had been born :-)