Do I.T. is a digital media training course equipping artists and creatives with the skills to develop their online profile and presence. The pilot scheme this year for Do I.T. took place at Community Arts North West every Wednesday from 10 July until 11 September 2013 and we plan to run the training again in 2014.

20 talented artists took part in this year’s course. Their work is in a diverse range of media including: visual arts, music, theatre, film, DJ-ing, puppet-making and journalism; and all have been learning through the training, how to use free & open source software to document, record and promote their work.

Do I.T. is funded through the European Social Fund and aims to raise the profile of artists and creatives from culturally diverse and refugee backgrounds, by developing digital media skills and online presence that will increase opportunities for employment.

Do IT – Artists showcase and networking event at the end of the course

The training programme involved structured approach to learning social media and media productions skills for the first half of the course and then supported participants to complete a project in the second. The tools used were either available online at no cost, or were Free Software available for all operating systems. The equipment we used were reconditioned second-hand laptops using Ubuntu operating system this allowed us to greatly increase the number of computers participants had access to.

The course trainers Sara, Tommy and Mick are in the process of revising the structure of what skills and tools we teach as part of Do IT. We will link the skills learned with an online accreditation system using Mozilla Open Badges. We have devised three levels of achievement for the areas of

• Blog: eg using blogging or creating websites
• Microblog: eg using systems like Twitter
• Image: eg photography, design manipulating images
• Audio: eg audio editing and recording
• Video: eg filming and editing video
• Connect: eg a variety of skills to do with collaboration and networking

There is a summary of this curriculum . We are also aiming to map the skill earned in these badges with forthcoming Mozilla Web Literacy standard. The main tools used on the course were WordPress, Twitter, Inkscape, Audacity, Kdenlive, Final Cut, Storify and google drive. Other interesting tools we explored were Gimp, Shotwell photo editor, Hoot suite, IFTTT.com,

Profiles and Work of the Do IT Artists Summer 2013