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
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
Where do you actually put a teleprompter?
Depends on the day. A Windows tablet propped beside the lens for a quick piece to camera. A laptop when you're on location and running off batteries. The big desktop monitor when the presenter is standing well back and the type needs to be ...enormous. And, when it's a proper set-up, a tablet lying flat under beam-splitter glass so the presenter reads straight down the lens.
Onwords does all four, and mirror mode flips the text for that last one — backwards on the tablet, the right way round in the glass.
One licence covers up to ten of your devices, so it's already installed on whichever screen ends up nearest the camera.
Windows 10 and 11, on Intel, AMD and ARM. A Mac version is on the way, with other platforms to follow.
Get it: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9N9FKJG22LJT
Learn more: https://onwords.app
#Teleprompter #VideoProduction #Filmmaking #WindowsApps #ChaosCreated
A brilliant start to the day. 🎥
This morning we live-streamed a TeenTech Innovation Live session on Patient Safety, broadcast to students ahead of their in-person TeenTech Innovation Day at Alder Hey Children's Hospital.
Hosted by the wonderful Maggie Philbin OBE, it ...brought students a fantastic line-up of guests:
Katherine Birch, Director of the Alder Hey Academy, on how young people helped shape the hospital itself (a 15-year-old's drawing inspired the design), and the five areas that keep patients safe.
Andy Green, Chief Technology Officer at Alder Hey, on protecting a hospital full of tech, and staying secure in an age of AI-powered cyber threats.
Zoe Keates, Senior Play Specialist at the RNOH, on becoming an "accidental innovator": she 3D-printed a mini MRI scanner to help children through their scans without anaesthetic, and it's since helped countless kids and saved the NHS money.
Plus a recorded conversation with entrepreneur James Eder on how health technology changed his life.
A wonderful event to produce, and one that will inspire students ahead of the in-person Innovation Day and the TeenTech Awards programme.
Huge thanks to Maggie, Sally Dixon (who produces the TeenTech Live events), all the guests, and the rest of the TeenTech and Alder Hey teams. On to the Innovation Day itself next month!
#TeenTech #STEM #STEMEducation #AlderHey #PatientSafety #VirtualEvents #YoungInnovators #ChaosCreated
Today Chaos Created were back in Wales at Sofrydd Primary School, running coding workshops as part of our Code Created initiative. We spent the whole day with Year 3 and 4, building a side-scrolling arcade-style space shooter.
Pupils designed their own pixel art for their ships and ...enemies, and by the end of the day Tom and Ali were helping them add their own bespoke ideas to their games.
It was great to return after working with the school last year, and we're excited to be back next month to work with Year 5 and 6.
#CodeCreated #ChaosCreated #CodingForKids #GameDev #PixelArt #MakeCodeArcade #STEM #Wales #PrimarySchool
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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!
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.
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!
