MinecraftCLUB at Derby QUAD

MinecraftCLUB is back on track!

After a successful few weeks of testing out our new set up and a bit of boating around, we’ve now began work on a new project in response to the upcoming gallery exhibition by Kimchi and Chips: Light Segments Space. 

Keeping our themes accessible, MinecraftCLUB members will work on builds revolving around structures of light and sound. As always, this can take many forms and we’re always amazed by the interpretations that our young people think up. Some ideas from this theme include:

Insulting light and sound - sensory overload

Cinema of light and sound

Pink floyd cover

Rude Goldburg Machine

Kimchi and Chips are also adapting the work to include the lines and and shapes of the Derbyshire countryside. To compliment this, we will be using seed: 31415926535

Boat Life - A Minecraft Story

After a very painful headache of a summer, with cancelled workshops and many phone calls to Microsoft regarding their deletion of our accounts for Minecraft: Education Edition, we returned to MinecraftCLUB yesterday evening with the commercial licensed Mojang version and things couldn’t have been better! 

With new things to learn and explore, including an unbreakable prison cell (tested to the max by Alex), and things that actually worked due to an external server held on  https://nitrous-networks.com/ which meant we could operate with minimal disruption. 

To add to relief that we were back, and with minimal fuss, hilarity ensued with an impromptu sand boat party outside a semi-build QUAD. 

Minecraft has become fun for us again and life is good!

Big thanks to Wavemaker in Stoke-On-Trent for their help and advice in our transition. 

Automatic Farm by Sam

We kick off our automatic/robot project with an Automatic Farm by MinecraftCLUB member Sam. The farm harvests plant based assets with the flick of a switch and is something Sam had developed before starting the project in our exploratory sessions.

Automation in Minecraft

The Final ‘Habitat’ World

Our final world for our FORMAT International Photography Festival themed project. 'Habitat' follows the festival's theme and focus' on the ideas of the natural home or environment and the participants preferred surroundings.

Participants were asked to consider exteriors and interiors as well as how their build fits with the surrounding environment. They were influenced by the festival in a number of ways, including the introduction of gold from Lisa Barnard’s 'The Canary and the Hammer' at Derby QUAD which investigates the industry and culture of gold mining.

Robots and Automation - It Begins!

Our first week of discovering robots in Minecraft. So far we've mastered walking and bouncing.

There’s a different vibe to the group. There’s thinking and problem solving which was previously lacking in their exploration. This has been extremely fun to observe and take part in. A great start to our new project in response to our exhibition Our Friends Electric starting in July.

Robots are taking over!

As we begin preparations for our upcoming robot themed exhibition Our Friends Electric, MinecraftCLUB will start to look at creating a world fit for robots. Before we can do this we need to learn how robots in Minecraft behave. 

If you have any exciting robot themed tutorials or projects to share, please let us know!

Young People’s thoughts on Habitat...

I built a boat....

i had fun building 

fftuftufi,if

i enjoyed working as a team to build the hotel!! :)

I HAD FUN

Meet a MinecraftCLUB Member: Grace

The second of our MinecraftCLUB member interviews on what they enjoy about Minecraft, MinecraftCLUB and building towards our gallery themes.

Minecraft at the Museum of London

Gallery Influence - Ahead still lies our future

Yesterday the members of MinecraftCLUB had the opportunity to explore the Ahead still lies our future exhibition at Derby QUAD for the FORMAT International Photography Festival and consider the themes of the work on show in connection with their habitat world builds. 

There were lots of themes drawn out from the visit from use of materials within space, lighting changing how things are seen and use of colours, to more in depth concepts of territory and being restricted without ones own habitat. 

From the visit, MinecraftCLUB members began reconsidering their builds and the habitat of the world itself by the use of gold materials, inclusion of a tree house, woodland mansion, using boats and adapting builds to include sea lanterns to aluminate the space. 

A Photoblog by Grace

Today Grace has been working on the staff room for the Tree Hotel. The Staff Room is where staff will stay before people come to the hotel.

The Tree Hotel is a group build because it’s quicker and gets you interacting with people more. As part of todays session, Grace worked with her brother Sam, who was building a mine entrance to the hotel. 

Account is not eligible...

Last weeks MinecraftCLUB session was unfortunately halted because, for an unknown reason, all of our 365 Education logins were displaying the above text:

“This account is not eligible to use Minecraft: Education Edition”

Why? All licences were paid for and active on our Windows Store for Business account. All had been in use for the weeks previous. No information was available about server issues or potential problems with networks. It was a mystery, but thankfully not a misery. 

A bit of back story:

It wasn’t easy for us to get educational status from Microsoft to use Minecraft: Education Edition. It was actually a bit of a struggle, with conversations in two different continents and with different areas of the organisation, none of which knew what to do about providing access to the beta last June. We missed out on purchasing the previous incarnation: MinecraftEdu, which was proving perfect to help us deliver a digitally creative response to our gallery programme, by a matter of days. Microsoft had bought that out as well and for four months there was no way of a new institution gaining access to an educational version of Minecraft before Minecraft:EE was released. 

To clarify, Minecraft:EE states educational status is: 

“ An eligible public museum must be an agency or institution organized on a permanent basis for essentially education or aesthetic purposes, and utilize a professional staff to exhibit tangible objects to the public on a regular basis.”

Now public galleries often come under the label of “museum” for ease and this is also in the American clarification of this type of organisation. QUAD as a public gallery is a permanent location, which provides both education and aesthetic programmes, as funded by Arts Council England (ACE). It is open 363 days a year, with gallery and/or educational delivery throughout. So, pretty much a “regular basis”. Finally, we only hire professional permanent and freelance staff to deliver our programmes. So that’s all bases covered, right? Nope, they still said no. This was highly frustrating and at times felt hopeless. What changed this you might be wondering? You’re using Minecraft:EE for the purpose of artistic reflection, we can see this in this blog. Well, the short answer is we told them that Apple and Adobe recognise us as educational institutions. Which, isn’t a lie. They do. We were using their tools to deliver creative activities. They saw this, why couldn’t Microsoft?

The good times:

So it all changed, we had access to the beta and MinecraftCLUB was born. Now the beta was not MinecraftEdu, which we came to fall in love with through our work with BlockBuilders. It doesn’t have the same ease of use and the teacher screen doesn’t have the same functionality at all. Please, oh please bring FREEZE back! But with everything in the arts and culture world, you adapt and use what you have and for the most part Minecraft:EE has been great. The functionality of the now subscription version is good and for our MinecraftCLUB and MinecraftLAB activities, it seems to be going the job well. Minus some slowing of the servers during busy workshops. 

I’ll be honest I’ve been wanting to write the above back story of our history with Minecraft:EE for a while. There must be other arts organisations out there who, with the desire to engage with audiences through digital tools, will be looking at Minecraft. In all honesty I would have struggled to write it WITHOUT SHOUTING IN CAPS TO EXPRESS MY FRUSTRATION AND RAGE before last weeks lock out. Yes, it was frustrating. No, we weren’t able to resolve it within the session. No, there was and has been no explanation for it. Minecraft:EE were contacted through their educational forums and although we were directed to the business store, this was three days later. What it taught me is actually giving young people an opportunity to explore other things together was also highly creative and rewarding. Some sat and played online games together, two actually came together to watch their favourite Youtuber give a tutorial on building in Minecraft. Neither of them knew they like the same channel until this point. It was this ease of “hey things don’t always work, but we can still do things together” that made me realise that there’s no reason to get mad at Microsoft, there were still rewarding moments to be had as a group away from Minecraft.

So this week we’re back on working on our project for the FORMAT International Photography Festival’s theme of ‘habitat’. Wish us luck!

Our Habitat Theme World - Week 2

Our current project, inspired by the FORMAT International Photography Festival theme habitat, is already shaping up. Participants are focusing on their preferred surroundings in Minecraft, whilst collaborating on the wider environment with other MinecraftCLUB members and using the layout of the world generated. 

Most are collaborating on small builds, with some secret areas - shhhhhhhhh

Meet a MinecraftCLUB Member: Cian

The first of our MinecraftCLUB member interviews on what they enjoy about Minecraft, MinecraftCLUB and building towards our gallery themes.