Unleashing Creativity Through Technology
Ali Maggs
Digital Creative & Tech Educator in Portishead, Bristol. Web design, app & games development, video production, podcasts, and coding workshops for schools across the UK.
About Me
On the production side, we create podcasts, documentary-style video content, and YouTube Live shows for a growing range of clients - including AstroAgency, the Centre for Hate Studies at the University of Leicester, and the Institute for Policy at the University of Leicester, where we produce a series of portrait-style policy brief videos. We also provide video production, data analysis, and digital marketing support for the Bristol & Beyond Stronger Practice Hub, and we produce the Shaking It Up With Parkinson's podcast in partnership with Parkinson's UK - a series exploring life, movement, and resilience hosted by Maria Lewis and Vicky Rees-Davies.
I'm also the Director of Technology at TeenTech, a UK charity, where I present workshops at TeenTech Festivals across the UK and produce virtual events - delivering live, interactive online sessions to young people featuring special guests from the worlds of science, technology, engineering, gaming, animation, and music.
Alongside this, I'm the Technical Director of Adaptive Fitness Training (AFT), a specialist education company for fitness professionals working with neurological conditions and rehabilitation - where I oversee the technology, digital infrastructure, and video production side of the business.
I also run coding workshops in UK schools through our Code Created initiative.
I'm a technology enthusiast, movie fanatic, and gamer. I enjoy travelling, taking random road trips, running, rollercoasters and theme parks, and drinking coffee. Lots of coffee.
Recent Projects
Difficult Conversations is live...
We've been recording this series with the University of Leicester's I-REACCH project since the summer, and it opens with Dr Amy Clarke on tackling harassment in research. There's a clip from her episode below.
Amy's team ...surveyed more than 1,300 students across five English universities. Many of the students who'd experienced harassment didn't call it harassment. It had become part of university life.
A new episode drops every fortnight. Coming up: Prof Kate Williams on rebuilding research cultures, Dr Diane Levine on positionality and research across cultures, Dr Ruoying Zhou on publish or perish, Dr Patrick Highton on equity, diversity and inclusion, Dr Lynne Howells on allyship, Dr Cleo White on the CIRCLE Toolkit, and Prof Richard Thomas on sustaining change.
Thanks to Dr Kike Ladipo for trusting us with her series, and to Dr Gez Williams and Dr Emma Angell for co-hosting.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube or at https://difficultconversationspodcast.com
#ChaosCreated #DifficultConversations #ResearchCulture #IREACCH
A brand new logo with roots going back to the 1920s...
Rosemary Nursery School is Bristol's oldest nursery school, and together with St Werburgh's Park and The Limes, it makes up the Central Bristol Nursery Schools Federation. Each school had its own hand-drawn logo full of ...character, but none had ever been converted to a vector file, the kind built from lines and shapes rather than pixels, so it stays sharp at any size.
That matters, because the logos couldn't scale and had never worked in a digital age. Whenever they were enlarged for banners or shrunk down for social media graphics, they turned blurry and blocky.
We worked with the teams at all three schools on a single federation logo that keeps a nod to each original: the children from St Werburgh's Park, the shape from Rosemary and the tree from The Limes. The palette takes its cue from Bristol's balloons and sits alongside the CBNSF website we built last year, and this time it's supplied as vector artwork, so it holds up everywhere from a browser tab to the sign outside the gate.
It's now up on signage across all three sites, thanks to @signsnowuk 🎈
Read how it came together on our blog, link in bio 🔗
#ChaosCreated #LogoDesign #Branding #Bristol #EarlyYears
Yesterday Chaos Created were back in Wales at the wonderful Coed-Y-Garn Primary School, running coding workshops as part of our Code Created initiative. It's our third year working with the school, and we ran two workshops across Year 4 to 6, building an underwater action game.
Two ...moments made the day for us. One pupil has been working on his game almost non-stop since we saw him last year, and another gave us a beautiful note as we were leaving, telling us how much she'd enjoyed the day.
Thank you Coed-Y-Garn, we look forward to seeing you again soon.
#CodeCreated #ChaosCreated #CodingForKids #GameDev #MakeCodeArcade #STEM #Wales #BlaenauGwent #PrimarySchool
Happy International Podcast Day 🎙️
We're proud to produce podcasts on subjects that matter:
🎧 Hidden Hate, for the Centre for Hate Studies at the University of Leicester
🎧 Shaking It Up with Parkinson's, powered by Parkinson's UK
🎧 Difficult ...Conversations, our newest series, produced for I-REACCH, the University of Leicester's programme to build a more inclusive research environment
We take care of everything: planning, recording, editing and release to all the major podcast platforms. You bring the conversations, we make sure your show sounds brilliant from episode one.
Thinking of starting a podcast? Based in Portishead, near Bristol, working with clients right across the UK. Let's make something ✨ chaoscreated.com
#InternationalPodcastDay #ChaosCreated #Podcast #PodcastProduction #UKPodcasts
Happy International Podcast Day! 🎙️
To mark the day, we're sharing the trailer for the latest episode of Shaking It Up with Parkinson's, in which @reachyourpeakonline and @the_fitness_mum are joined by broadcaster @thejeremyvine and his sister, Sonya, for a conversation ...about family, Parkinson's, and what really helps.
🎧 Listen to this incredibly honest and moving episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. And you'll find all episodes on the show's website.
https://shakingitupwithparkinsonspodcast.com/
A huge thank you to @parkinsonsuk for powering the show and helping Maria and Vicky reach more people living with Parkinson's, their families and the professionals who support them.
Podcasts are a big part of what we do at Chaos Created, and we're proud of the range of voices we get to work with. Alongside Shaking It Up, we produced Hidden Hate, and later this week we launch Difficult Conversations for the University of Leicester's I-REACCH project. Keep an eye out for the first episode.
💻 Find out more about our podcast production: https://www.chaoscreated.com
#InternationalPodcastDay #Parkinsons #Podcast #PodcastProduction
Yesterday we recorded the final episode of Difficult Conversations, the podcast series we're producing for the University of Leicester's I-REACCH project. That's all eight episodes recorded, and the first one is out later this week! 🎙️
This one felt like a fitting way ...to round things off. As the Wellcome-funded I-REACCH project draws to a close, Professor Richard Thomas, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation, joined us to talk about what happens next: how you keep culture change going once the funding ends.
His advice to anyone launching a research culture project: start with sustainability, not the launch. It's easy to start new initiatives, but much harder to make sure what you learn actually sticks. That means thinking early on about who owns the problem, listening to the community you're trying to support, and continuing to evaluate long after the project finishes.
Hosted by Kike Ladipo, PhD, SFHEA and Emma Angell, I-REACCH Project Manager at the University of Leicester.
Eight thoughtful, honest conversations, and we can't wait to share them with you. Keep an eye out for episode one later this week!
#ResearchCulture #HigherEducation #Leadership #Podcast #UniversityOfLeicester #ChaosCreated
Onwords 1.4.0 is here 🎬
Stage directions now live in your script. Write [pause] or [look to camera two] and it appears on the prompter exactly where you put it, without the app waiting to hear you say it.
Plus a Tips button in the editor, and a quicker start when you begin ...listening.
Full write-up on the blog, link in bio. Download and find out more at onwords.app
#Onwords #Teleprompter #ContentCreator #VideoCreator #Podcaster #YouTuber #Filmmaking #ScriptWriting #Windows11
Year three at the Surrey Youth Arts & Culture Festival, and it's great to be back! Tom and I are set up at the Library Hub in Staines-Upon-Thames, running coding workshops as part of Chaos Created's Code Created initiative, with a room full of creative young coders.
Today ...we're building arcade-style space shooters from scratch. Everyone is designing their own spaceships and alien invaders, then coding the gameplay that brings it all to life: flying controls, firing lasers, explosions, scoring and waves of enemies to blast. It's brilliant watching ideas turn into playable games over the course of a session.
Best of all, the games don't stay here. Everyone can take their projects home to keep playing, share with friends and family, and carry on developing them.
Thanks to the festival team for having us back again!
#CodeCreated #ChaosCreated #CodingWorkshop #GameDev #KidsWhoCode #LearnToCode #STEM #SurreyYouthArts #Staines #SurreyLibraries #YoungCoders #GameDesign #RetroGaming
Last night the Chaos Created team produced September's Adaptive Fitness Training Live Panel Webinar, "Dystonia in Parkinson's", streamed live on YouTube with audience questions coming in throughout. 🎙️
Rachel Rutley took viewers right back to basics: what dystonia ...actually is, how it differs from dyskinesia, and how it can show up in so many different ways, from toe clawing to a foot turning inwards. And then Jules King (@happylegsjules) brought it to life, speaking so openly about what dystonia feels like after 26 years living with Parkinson's, and how she trains around it.
Live sessions like this give fitness professionals something a recording can't: the chance to put their own questions directly to the experts, and get answers there and then. That's what we aim to make as smooth and easy as possible.
HUGE thanks to Rachel, Jules and the whole AFT team. 🧡
Next up: Thursday 29 October, on working with amputees. Free to attend and open for registration now on the Adaptive Fitness Training website.
Chaos Created produces engaging, interactive live events, streamed on YouTube, for clients across the UK. Find out more via the link in our bio.
#VirtualEvents #EventProduction #WebinarProduction #LiveStreaming #AdaptiveFitness #Parkinsons #Dystonia #ChaosCreated
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Reviews and Testimonials
Hear from the clients and schools we've had the pleasure of working with - from Chaos Created's web, app, podcast and video production projects, to coding workshops delivered across schools through our Code Created initiative.
Some of the feedback from the pupils really sums it up:
“It was the best morning ever!”
“I feel like I’m a real coder.”
“That was the best workshop we’ve had, especially because we can do it at home!”
We really appreciate you coming in and sharing your expertise. It was brilliant to see how enthusiastic and engaged all the children were throughout the session.
Thanks again and we’d love to have you back in the future!
A particular highlight was the opportunity for the children to design and build their own game. This hands-on challenge kept everyone fully engaged and allowed them to apply new skills creatively and confidently. Since the workshop, the children haven’t stopped talking about their games and how excited they were to see their ideas come to life. The children are so proud, we're even holding a family session so the children can share their accomplishments!
Diolch yn fawr!
Some of the feedback from the pupils really sums it up:
“It was the best morning ever!”
“I feel like I’m a real coder.”
“That was the best workshop we’ve had, especially because we can do it at home!”
We really appreciate you coming in and sharing your expertise. It was brilliant to see how enthusiastic and engaged all the children were throughout the session.
Thanks again and we’d love to have you back in the future!
We were particularly impressed by how Ali and Tom kept students interested and encouraged active participation throughout the workshop. The students remained focused, enthusiastic, and fully engaged in the activities, producing impressive outcomes. It was a highly enjoyable and valuable experience, and if we have the opportunity in the future, we would gladly invite them back to work with our students again.