About Us
Introducing Sandbox
Sandbox is a dynamic new initiative from the University of Central Lancashire that brings together a wide range of skills and expertise to enable innovative and collaborative ways of working.
The hybrid Sandbox centre is both a creative facilitation space and a digital media R&D lab, with opportunities for academic and industry partnerships across all of the centre’s activities. Our interdisciplinary staff welcomes the opportunity to rise to your particular challenge.
Please download our Adobe PDF Brochure here.
Staff
The Sandbox staff is truly interdisciplinary, drawing talent from academia, industry, and cultural institutions. We also benefit from the broad range of expertise and intellectual curiosity that exists across UCLan’s faculties, with several research residencies offered to staff members each year. Meet the Sandbox staff:
Simon Robertshaw
Director
Since completing his Masters from the Royal College of Art, Simon has worked across commercial, cultural and artistic sectors. As an academic he has worked with a number of institutions. He came to prominence as a creative interactive artist exhibiting in major galleries around the world. Most notably he was shortlisted for the Imaginaria Award in 1998 and received many commissions including work from the Wellcome Trust in 1998. His focus changed in 2000 when he was appointed Head of Research at the International Centre for Digital Content at Liverpool John Moores University, developing creative new media solutions across a number of technologies within cultural, creative and commercial sectors. He took over as Director of ICDC in 2003. In April 2007 he was appointed director of Sandbox.
Jonathan Balls
Interaction Technologist
Surviving a childhood in Norfolk, Jonnie has always been excited by the opportunities that technology presents, especially the bus out of town. He caught that bus to Preston where he gained his degree in Media Technology.
Still excited about the opportunities that technology presented, he worked at Lancashire County Council developing innovative web-based solutions to support learning in schools. Keen to work on even more varied and innovative projects he jumped at the opportunity to join the Sandbox team, where he hopes to discover new ways in which technology can enhance our daily lives.
Jonnie also likes seamonkeys, gardening and small furry kittens.
Onno Baudouin
Senior Creative Technologist
In love from an early age with all things technology, yet frustrated by its capacity to perplex most users, Onno set out to learn and adapt the tools of the trade to make technology more palatable for himself and others. From low level coding to meta-programming tools, from pure applications to web, from the corporate to the artistic, he has always put the user's needs and experience first. In the past three years Onno has also discovered his love for facilitation: enabling groups of people to work better together, often using custom-made technology to aid in that process. Onno has worked as an artist, programmer, graphic designer, ideas consultant, researcher, and web developer for major exhibitions and companies. He was raised on chocolates, the BBC and LEGO™ in Antwerp, Belgium.
Jenny Bennion
Sandbox Administrator
After seasickness ruled out a career as a pirate, Jenny made her way to Glasgow where she gained an MA in Classics; she then followed this up with a Graduate Diploma in Psychology from uclan. However the need to start paying her, by now substantial student debts (the piratical treasure would have come in useful here), took her to Lancashire County Council and then via a brief detour to the EU, she arrived at Sandbox where she is now busily trying to organise everything.
Jenny likes post-it notes, eating and the great outdoors.
Paul Egglestone
Project Developer
Paul Egglestone joins Sandbox from UCLan’s School of Journalism, Media and Communication, where he previously lead an International Documentary MA and a Media Management BA over in Shanghai. A former independent producer working for BBC, ITV and Sky on regional and network programming, he now focuses on international documentary and digital content generation for broadband and mobile dissemination. He sits on the steering group for Lancashire Economic partnerships New Media and ICT group and is also leads the Journalism Sector of Northern Edge, the centre of professional excellence for creative and cultural industries. He also continues to make films and write music.
Janine Huizenga
Cultural Mapping Project Coordinator
Janine studied Photography and Audiovisual and Theatre Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy of Amsterdam from 1984 to 1989. After several years as a visual artist, with national and international exhibitions, she began work as a visual and interaction designer at Waag Society, creators of innovative social and cultural media applications in Amsterdam. For the past few years she held the position of Creative Director at Waag Society. Her creative work focuses on community participation in innovative media projects in such areas as social identity, health, art and culture. She has been involved in such projects as the award-winning Digital Reading and Story-Telling tables; the creation of the new physical and virtual “Digital Space” in the Haarlem Teylers Museum; and Monstermedia, an online media education tool for primary education. In addition to her creative work, Janine has taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy of Amsterdam, the Sandberg Institute, the European Media Masters of Art at the HKU in Hilversum, and the HvA Media Lab, Amsterdam.
Omer Rashid
Interaction Programmer
Omer has over 7 years research and development experience in mobile applications and solutions. He gave up a career in engineering to pursue his passion for software development. He has a Masters in IT and Data Communication and is a PhD candidate at Lancaster University. His research work has been extensively published in various IEEE and ACM journals and has received accreditation from the likes of Nokia and ACM.
His research focuses on design and software engineering of novel networked mobile applications and games incorporating a range of technologies such as RFID/NFC, Bluetooth and Location Tracking etc. He also investigates the integration of novel UIs into these applications to enhance user experience and business profitability and evolution of these applications to incorporate enhanced services offered by IP Multimedia Subsystem.
Michael Meaney
Creative Facilitator
Michael is the resident reflector and what-iffer at Sandbox. A between-the-lines listener who loves to peer into the inner machinations of brains and groups with the aim of raising awareness and facilitating change and learning.
He comes to Sandbox with a wealth of industry experience in marketing and business development. He began his career in the wine buying team at Thresher, before moving to Whitbread where he held several marketing and forecasting posts. Whilst finishing his MBA Michael's passion for developing people and teams was re-ignited. He decided to put his people skills and Psychology background into practice by working as a professional coach and management consultant, specialising in individual and team development. In his 'spare time' he has started several businesses. Most recently Spice Inns Ltd; a quality restaurant/ bar chain in the home counties.
John Mills
Bespoke Project Coordinator
John joins Sandbox from the position of regional editor with online business-to-business news agency DirectNews, and will be working with the team to deliver the Bespoke project.
Over the last five years, John has established editorial offices in Manchester and Leeds, and more recently headed a team of virtual newswire reporters based throughout the UK and Europe. Before entering the hectic world of business reporting, John lived by the sea in Brighton where he completed a Master's degree in 19th Century English Literature and Culture. His research covered how the 'concept of the self' was represented and reflected through the period's fiction, photography, art, philosophy and urban regeneration.
Zulma Patarroyo
Creative Facilitator
When asked to write a short bio paragraph I decided to go around the office to ask how people would describe me using 3 words, I thought that was more interesting than my academic, work or entrepreneurial achievements. This is what people said:.
Driven – Creative – Small
Fiery – Visual – Ethical
Vivacious – Stubborn – Adventurous
Enthusiastic – Green – Open
Creative – Enthusiastic – Strong
Delightful – Kind – Eccentric
Intense – Fragile – Passionate
Motivated – Positive – Subjective (from and objective point of view) (?)
So you still want to know more about me... perhaps I can tell you about things I like and things I don’t like.
I like people, I like technology, I like people much more than technology, I like hiking, I like the sun, I like torrential rain in tropical countries and how everything looks so clear after the rain, I like the internet, I hate the internet, I like riding my bike down a hill, I like green mango with salt, I like playing with my daughter, I like playing with people, I like playing in general, I like asking questions, I like it when people ask me good questions, I used to like to read books a lot, but having a baby doesn’t leave too much time for me to do that anymore, I like to doodle, I really like to doodle, I like graphic facilitation and visual understanding, I like aha! Moments in myself and other people, I like having conversations with people, I really like it when people smile, I really don’t like writing biographical accounts of my life in one paragraph, I like talking, I like total silence, I love swimming in the ocean, I’m fascinated by leadership, creativity and learning and scared by how we work so hard to stop it from happening, I like systems thinking, I really like when people connect heads, hearts and hands in what they are doing.
Tom Shaw
Interaction Technologist
Having been interested in anything mechanical since he can remember, Tom loves seeing how the connections between the components of a system interact. After growing up and deciding that being a fireman could not offer him the option to open up all the gadgets just to see how they functioned, Tom has worked with academic types to provide technology-based solutions to various problems they might have. Tom is self taught (and proud of that fact) and is capable of developing web and CDRom technologies using PHP, Perl, mod_perl, Flash, XML, RSS and probably just about any other acronym you can come up with. Tom also has an interest in graphics for print-based publications, as well as interface design.
Sandbox is a dynamic new initiative from the University of Central Lancashire that brings together a wide range of skills and expertise to enable innovative and collaborative ways of working.
The hybrid Sandbox centre is both a creative facilitation space and a digital media R&D lab, with opportunities for academic and industry partnerships across all of the centre’s activities. Our interdisciplinary staff welcomes the opportunity to rise to your particular challenge.
