Image: Digital work by artist Antonio Roberts

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UPDATE: April 2021 Holiday Club with Antonio Roberts : Creative Coding AKA ‘Digital Foraging’

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Company Drinks likes to stress the fact that we are surrounded by green spaces where we can forage fruit for our communal drinks. Antonio stresses the fact that the internet is full of ‘open-source’ free software that we can use to create exciting sound and visuals. As a performing visual artist and
musician he uses live coding techniques to de-mystify technology and reveal its design decisions, limitations, and creative potential.

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During the week-long ‘Club’, Antonio introduced the group to the Estuary live coding platform, with the aim of writing computer programs  “on the fly”. The fast feedback loops and improvisatory spirit of live coding can result in complex and encouraging sound and visual effects. Throughout the week the club room was a high-energy, high-motivation and high-concentration zone for digital experimentation.

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Watch the final collaborative video / musical piece made by the group with Antonio on our Vimeo Page. 

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Antonio Roberts is a prolific artists, curator, performer and musician and his work has been featured at galleries and festivals including databit.me (2012), Furtherfield (2013, 2019), Tate Britain (2014, 2015, 2020), Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago (2014),Birmingham Open Media (2015-2016), Jerwood Arts (2016), Whitney Museum of American Art (2017), Green Man Festival (2017), Barbican (2018) and Victoria and Albert Museum (2019). Visit his website, or follow him on Instagram or Twitter.

The workshop was supported Oribi Davies and Martin Osman.
The next New Town Culture Workshop at Company Drinks will be in collaboration with local artist Sabrina Mantle link.

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UPDATE: June 2020 Online Holiday Club with Antonio Roberts : ‘Reclaim the Space’

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Between May 2020 and October 2021 Company Drinks will be closely working with the New Town Culture programme team
to set up and support a new Young People Advisory Group, and to run a series of hands-on creative workshops between artists and young people from across the borough.

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Antonio Roberts has been the first artist to devise an online workshop for a group of young people, with the idea to reclaim your own image and expression, by asking what the brands you buy and the websites you visit say about you. In short the workshop was to reclaim the internet and its tools,  and the five sessions covered digital up-skilling, re-mixing brands and reclaiming your own image and worth. The young people were also given the opportunity to design their own currency, using  Over the course of a week the group sharpened their skills in a range of digital arts and technology, from graphic design to coding to glitch art.

The final outcome brought strength and resilience, as well as better employability and a new found passion for the arts.

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Outcomes and ideas from the workshop will be published soon, with some entering operations at Company Drinks in the near future.

Photo: Antonio Roberts

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New Town Culture is a programme of artistic and cultural activity taking place in adult and children’s social care across the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.