FoAM - Kernow

FoAM Kernow is a non-profit organisation founded and run by Dave Griffiths and Dr. Amber Griffiths, and we are one of six collaborative FoAM studios dotted around Europe.
Most of our time is spent on projects to better understand the ecosystems we are part of, enable more sustainable behaviours, design bespoke appropriate technology (things that can be understood, fixed, repurposed, sometimes off-grid or even elephant-proof), reduce inequalities, and help people to develop creative and confident relationships with science and technology.
In practical terms, you’ll find us designing workshops, building hardware and electronics, writing software, creating exhibitions and unusual opportunities, amplifying the voices of our communities, publishing our work, teaching at all levels (from primary to postgraduate), advocating for political change, and giving people a leg-up wherever we possibly can.
We see transdisciplinarity (working outside established boundaries) as the only viable approach to tackling the most pressing problems, and routinely embed co-design and citizen science as essential approaches for encouraging and including broader perspectives. Once you start with a problem and work your way out, disciplines become a bit nonsensical.
Our projects are usually collaborations or commissions working with publicly-funded organisations, so we make all our work freely available through free software, creative commons and open access publications. This means anyone is able to modify or build on our work for their own purposes.
FoAM Kernow's work has been featured on BBC Radio 6 Music, Blueprint Magazine, Official Raspberry Pi Magazine, The Economist, The Guardian and The Wire and has won the Soil Association's innovation award 2014 and the 2011 VIDA award. We have written for The Guardian and The Conversation on the rapid changes happening in research and education.
FoAM Kernow is registered in the UK as a non-profit organisation (Company No. 09073427). You can find our articles of association, and our environmental, equality and data statements on github. Our 2019 activity report is available here.
A selection of current projects from our studio are highlighted below, followed by a list of who's currently working at the FoAM Kernow studio, with all our archived projects, blog posts, events and publications listed underneath:
Multi-Species Sward App
A system to make it easier for farmers to grow and monitor multi-species swards for more sustainable farming, increasing pollinator diversity, improving soil, and resulting in healthier livestock and…
AccessLab
The AccessLab project aims to improve access to and the judgement of scientific information, through direct citizen-scientist pairings.
The Great Bower Building Experiment
Bower birds are known for building ornate and impressive structures. We're running an experiment to see how people would build these bowers, given limited materials.
Viruscraft
Viruscraft is a research project combining tangible interfaces, craft and computer games to explore how viruses jump from one host species to another, working with Dr. Ben Longdon and Dr. Ben Ashby.
Sonic Kayaks
The Sonic Kayak is a musical and scientific instrument with which to investigate nature. Kayaks rigged with underwater environmental sensors generate live music from the marine world, providing the p…
Penelope
How can we make tools that help understand the ancient weaver's mind? How she calculated and solved the first recorded mathematical proofs, embedding them in pattern. How do certain forms of tec…
The Evidence Support Initiative
Placements for science researchers on local councils, to help provide evidence for decision making.
Midimutant
Made in collaboration with Aphex Twin, the midimutant learns how to program your dx7 synth so you don't have to.
Activities
- AccessLab
- (Algo|Afro)futures
- Algomech
- Al Jazari
- Allotment Lab
- Android App Privacy Policy
- Betablocker
- Biohacking
- Butterfly Mimicry Game
- Carnivore Mapper
- Clearwing Butterfly Citizen Science Game
- Code Club
- Crab Camouflage
- Cricket Tales
- Dazzle Bug
- Doris
- Egglab
- Flotsam
- Future Thinking for Social Living
- Germination X
- Greenspace Voxels
- groWorld
- HapStar
- Human in Residence
- Human in Residence: Jo Garrett
- human in Residence: Jo McCallum
- human in Residence: Matt Creasey
- Human in Residence: Shelly Knotts
- Humans in Residence: Holger Ballweg and Shelly Knotts
- Invisible Worlds Residencies 2018
- Invisible Worlds Residency 2019
- Livecoding
- Malaria Minigames
- Midimutant
- Mongoose 2000
- Multi-Species Sward App
- Naked on Pluto
- Pattern Matrix
- Penelope
- Play, Learn & Discover
- Project Nightjar
- Red King
- Residencies
- Scheme bricks
- Sonic Kayaks
- Spork Factory
- Symbai
- Tanglebots
- Teaching with Minecraft
- The Bicrophonic Research Institute
- The Evidence Support Initiative
- The Farm Crap App
- The Great Bower Building Experiment
- The #wasplove game
- Tidalcycles
- Viruscraft
- Wasps for farmers
- Weaving Codes
- What Remains
- Workshops
Events
- AccessLab - Climate, Environment and Health (January)
- AccessLab - Climate, Environment and Health (June)
- AccessLab - Climate, Environment and Health (November)
- Accesslab Exeter - Journalists/Bloggers/Writers
- Accesslab Penzance - Fishing/Marine
- Accesslab Plymouth - Parliamentary, Council and Policy
- AccessLab Workshop
- Accesslab Workshop - Krowji 2017
- AccessLab XR
- A Day without Devon
- Algomech
- AlgoMech
- Algorave Brighton
- Beyond the Fields – A transdisciplinary plein air convergence
- Creative Design Informatics for Horticultural Awareness
- Crypto-tea-party
- Dazzlebug in Alaska
- Farm Crap App at Jump Start Agritech
- Feral Business Research Network
- FoAM at the Bloomsbury Festival
- Greenspace Voxels at the Newlyn Art Gallery
- Greenspace Voxels Talk
- International FoAM Open Studio
- Invisible Worlds residency 2019 - Austin Houldsworth
- Invisible Worlds Residency - ... and then we see if we will be friends
- Invisible Worlds Residency - Disintegrated Rock
- Invisible Worlds Residency - Ferment!
- Involving People Better in Research
- Machine Wilderness Workshop
- Multispecies Sward App testing
- Open studio
- Playing with voxels: A 3D journey through urban green space forms
- Sonic Kayaks @ British Science Festival
- Sonic Kayaks Open Hacklab
- Sonic Kayaks Open Hacklab
- Sonic Kayaks - sound mapping workshop
- Tanglebots Workshop
- Tanglebots Workshop
- Viruscraft game testing
- Viruscraft open play testing
- Viruscraft Workshop
- Wasps and pizza
- Weavingcodes Kernow
- Woven weaving robots at Algomech 2019
Blog posts
- AccessLab for libraries - end of project review
- Woven robots for dancing together during a pandemic
- Viruscraft evaluation and ask-me-anything
- The Evidence Support Initiative launch
- FoAM Kernow 2020 review
- Open call for a non-executive director
- Step by step: building tangible livecoded braid robots
- Building a new Pattern Matrix with conductive thread
- Sonic Kayak update - new sensors, sonifications, and visualisations
- Sonic Kayak environmental data sonification
- AccessLab pandemic style
- Sonic Kayak progress – new pollution sensors for citizen science
- Viruscraft 2.0
- Invisible Worlds residency 2019 - The Intergalactic Estate Agency
- Notes on potential new sensors for Sonic Kayaks - turbidity and air quality
- Sonic Kayak sound mapping workshop
- AccessLab for Extinction Rebellion
- Invisible Worlds resident 2019 - Austin Houldsworth
- Woven robot swarm weaves at Algomech (with a little help from their friends)
- FoAM Citizen Science installations at the Eden Project
- Our approach to working with the UK science 'impact' agenda
- Karin Johansson's Sonic Kayak MSc placement
- AccessLab futures workshop
- How to submit a UK VAT return if you are a strange organisation
- Invisible Worlds Residencies
- How to run an AccessLab
- Open Studio at FoAM Kernow
- Making circuit boards with a CNC machine
- Penelopean robotics part 3 - radio transmissions
- Penelopean robotics part 2 - building a robot by weaving
- Reply to FoAM Kernow from Sam Gyimah MP, Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation.
- An open letter to Sarah Newton MP
- AccessLab Penzance - notes from the event
- Stackable hexagon prototype boards
- Viruscraft: tangible interface electronics
- Building Viruscraft planets
- Memoirs from James Duffy's Sonic Kayak Secondment
- Viruscraft: Notes from workshop 2
- AccessLab 2018: The launch of a new workshop series
- Viruscraft hardware prototyping: etching PCBs
- Midimutant in MagPi Magazine
- Further attempts at untangling tablet weave
- Futurecrafting in Cornwall with FoAM Earth
- Accesslab Pilot 2 Notes
- How to design a tangible programming language – Pattern Matrix at Algomech (part 2)
- Pattern Matrix at Algomech (part 1)
- Creative Design Informatics for Horticultural Awareness at the End of the World Garden
- Pattern Matrix V2 report
- Getting a feel for tangible interfaces
- Technology after Collapse
- Pattern Matrix PCBs arrived & first tests
- Viruscraft: building a ‘reasonably accurate’ genetic game world simulation
- Accesslab Pilot 1 Notes
- Pattern Matrix 2
- Viruscraft next steps
- Thoughts on mongoose data moving
- Accesslab Ingredients Research
- Viruscraft Workshop 1
- Penelope: a new 4 year weaving project
- Shelly's sonification residency
- Tanglebots for young people with autism
- Jo's Sonic Kayak residency
- Cultivating FoAM Kernow
- Dazzlebug in Alaska
- Report: Rethinking Diversity in a Rural Region Conference
- Allotment Crap App
- Farm Crap App Pro Edition
- NES/Famicom game programming discoveries
- Sonic Kayaks at the British Science Festival
- Greenspace voxel models
- Change of location, brain scans, Mineways, OBJs, smiles
- Exporting OBJs from Minecraft for 3D printing (spoiler, not so fabulous)
- Voxels: Minecraft & surprising lack of immediate obstacles
- Fluxus and Voxels and long rendering times
- Voxel Debut
- Sonic Kayaks: how to build musical instruments for marine exploration
- Sonic Kayaks open hacklab 2
- Data sonification for citizen science
- Cricket Tales released
- A 6502 lisp compiler, sprite animation and the NES/Famicom
- The General Opinion at SWARM
- Red King and crowd computing
- slub Penryn->NYC live stream 25-03-02016
- A tanglebots workshop report
- Sonic Kayak open hacklab 1
- Artificially evolved camouflage
- Sonic Bikes to Sonic Kayaks - using puredata
- Tanglebots workshop preparation
- How to warp a tablet loom (/neolithic digital computing device)
- Red King: Host/Parasite co-evolution citizen science
- Machine Wilderness Workshop
- Wild Food Foraging Thursday
- NightScience 2015
- Making science accessible – moving beyond open-access
- How to make an organisation like foam
- Biohacking and yeastograms
- Foam Kernow mini update
- 3D warp weighted loom simulation
- Coding structure with threads
- Coding with threads: Tablet loom
- Coding with threads: Frame loom
- Symbai field test in India
- Robot nightjar eggshibition at the Poly, Falmouth
- Bumper Crop
Publications
- AccessLab: Workshops to broaden access to scientific research
- A grassroots remote sensing toolkit using live coding, smartphones, kites and lightweight drones
- An ecological role for assortative mating under infection?
- An emerging viral pathogen truncates population age structure in a European amphibian and may reduce population viability
- A new android smartphone app for geospatial mapping from drones and kites
- A novel approach to wildlife transcriptomics provides evidence of disease‐mediated differential expression and changes to the microbiome of amphibian populations
- Coding with Knots
- Data collection and storage in long-term ecological and evolutionary studies: The Mongoose 2000 system
- Exploring and Designing our Future Robot Companions
- Growing self representational life forms & some dusty software archaeology
- Hapstar: automated haplotype network layout and visualization
- Population genetic structure in European lobsters: implications for connectivity, diversity and hatchery stocking
- Population genetic structure in European lobsters: implications for connectivity, diversity and hatchery stocking
- Relative advantages of dichromatic and trichromatic color vision in camouflage breaking
- Smartphones in ecology and evolution: a guide for the app-rehensive
- Sonic Kayaks: Environmental monitoring and experimental music by citizens
- Tanglebots
- Textility of Code: A Catalogue of Errors
- Visualising the urban green volume: Exploring LiDAR voxels with tangible technologies and virtual models