Introducing the Techies

Over the next 10 weeks, each of these groups will be working on developing a working prototype that when delivered can hopefully be of use to the both the community organisation and charity, as well as having impact on the wider sector in Northern ireland and further afield.



We’ve been searching high and low for these “techies” who will now each be embedded in their organisations and beavering away on solutions to the problems that we’ve established. Through the journeys, they may come across some new avenues, ways to solve it and may take it in different directions.



Here’s a little about each of the groups, the problems and the Techies that will be addressing the problems.

AWARE have been educating and fighting depression for over 20 years. They’re looking at ways of developing their “Mood Matters” course and taking it to a larger audience. They’re going to be working with David Shawe of Invisible Building. David, trained in both graphic and web design to come up with a user friendly platform.

Colin Glen Trust are looking to come up with a new attraction to their park using Alternative or Augmented Reality to create a new fairy glen. This will be designed in consultation with youths from the area and will benefit the whole place. Their Techie is Nigel from Story FX- Nigel has worked with the BBC for over 15 years and has produced an augmented reality war time trench for an attraction at the Somme as well as helping to rebuild the Titanic in 3D.


NICVA want to develop a definitive database of the Northern Ireland community and voluntary sector that can be used by themselves and anyone with an interest in the sector, and want to keep the data live by using API’s to ensure that it’s fresh and up to date, and can tie in with existing NICVA work. We’ve teamed up with Kainos in order to deliver this through Matthew, their software engineer on this project.


NOW Project want to develop their successful JAM Card project to become a digital tool. This tool, which helps people who need “Just a Minute” to compose themselves in some situations, is massively successful offline, and the person who will be trying to come up with a digital solution to this is Ciaran Murray from Creative Metrics. Ciaran is the reigning DANI Awards “Northern Ireland Digital Person of the Year”
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TAMHI are a small organisation based in the New Lodge who do lots of work using sport as a measure of promoting mental health. One of the problems that they face is getting their volunteers to measure their impact properly, which in turn has problems when applying for funding. They’re passed this on to Kyle Gawley from GetInvited who will be developing an app that can help people check in as they use services in the area, giving feedback and gamifying the process.


PLACE/DTNI have teamed up for a joint project which is concerned with the use of great spaces in communities, how they can access them, and what they can do to take ownership of them. They’ll be working with a team headed up by Kevin Curran, based at Ulster University.
These are all kicked off now, and we’ll be sharing more info as they develop.



Keep an eye on the Techies in Residence website for more info on what’s happening.