Bournemouth University’s (BU) academia and students recently teamed up with Cyberjaya to take the Global Festival of Learning to Malaysia. Student ambassadors and academic staff from BU were on hand to facilitate activities, workshops and talks in collaboration with representatives of the local creative industry based in Cyberjaya. The festival was jointly opened by the Managing Director of Cyberview, Faris Yahaya and Professor John Vinney, the Vice-Chancellor of BU.
Speaking at the event, Faris Yahaya expounded on the virtues of collaboration and hailed the Global Festival of Learning as emblematic of the collaborative foundations of Cyberjaya. “Cyberview has certainly come a very long way in our 19 year journey of growth and transformation alongside Cyberjaya into the global tech hub it is today. We are particularly proud of the culture of openness that we have created here at Cyberjaya; our doors are wide open for bold new ideas, businesses and collaborations and we are thrilled playing host to our guests from Bournemouth University,” Faris said.
“With a combined creative population of over 80,000 students, knowledge workers and entrepreneurs contributing to a tight network of industry-academia relationships, ours is a community that enables continuous learning for anyone seeking to leverage readily available talent and resources for their next great idea, making Cyberjaya a truly capital of creation,” he added.
Among the activities at Cyberjaya were keynote speeches from education and industry. Bournemouth University’s Peter Truckel spoke about his work on visual effects in films and the BFX festival and Research Assistant Katie Hill spoke about creating animated films for the Institute for Studies in Landscape and Human Evolution. Also in attendance at the event was Dr Sonal Minocha, BU’s Pro Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement) as well as Mr Matt Desmier (Director of Think Create Do) and Ms. Kay Stonham (Lecturer in Screenwriting at BU).
Speakers and creative industry players from Malaysia also took the opportunity to share their industry expertise in games production, computer animation and the Malaysian creative industry landscape. These speakers included Hasnul Hadi Samsudin Director of the Creative Multimedia Division at Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), Wau Animation founder Usamah Zaid, Director of Chain-FX, Roshfaizal Ariffin and Giggle Garage’s founder Zeno Gabing.
