As many of our regular visitors are aware, the Reactive Colours site has been unavailable for some time. This has been caused by a number of factors that have been difficult to resolve. Although we managed to host the Gallery for a short while, this is no longer an option.
From October 2009, the Reactive Colours project will migrate to the ReacTickles brand. This will have two distinct, but not entirely separate, activity strands - ReacTickles 2.0 and ReacTickles.org
ReacTickles 2.0 - ReacTickles Creativity Box will be re-packaged to make it less costly to reproduce and to ship outside of the UK. TAG Learning and SEMERC, our current distributor will continue to be the main outlet for this version and it is expected that they will have an active role in its production.
The software will remain the same although some modifications will be incorporated to ensure that there are more accessibility features. The printed materials will be redesigned and streamlined, to make them less bulky, with the possibility of including PDF support materials.
ReacTickles.org, is the proposed new web portal, which aims to maintain the idea of a community-driven resource that reaches beyond the educational software market. Reactivecolours.org has been a vital dissemination and distribution mechanism for the project, with many well-established and respected organisations linking and recommending the site as well as providing a regular source of feedback from individuals that use ReacTickles with their children at home and other centres. The ReacTickles Gallery was a highly popular feature of the reactivecolours.org website. Recent hosting and staffing issues have highlighted the problems of a monolithic system, managed through a proprietary infrastructure. As such the site was not sustainable without substantial continued investment. Although sales of ReacTickles Creativity Box supported this, it has been insanity and technically demanding. So the site forward in a more democratic and modular way.
Joel, Ed and Will are taking the lead on this new ReacTickles model, which we hope will thrive on the input of both the developer and user community and as such is designed to enable people to view the source code, comment and feedback into the site. From a Gallery of 10 basic ReacTickles, we hope the new site will grow and become populated by diverse contributions from people interested in ecological design. There more about our proposed reconceptualisation of ReacTickles on the Guiding principles for new ReacTickles page.
If you would like to be alerted to any developments or to request further information, please email:
Wendy Keay-Bright
Reader in Inclusive Design
Senior Lecturer in Time Based Media
Department of Creative Communication
Cardiff School of Art and Design
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