With Union Island due to be officially launched on May 1st, the TUC have released the following press release. You can also find more information about their island and future events to be held there by watching their blog at www.slunionisland.org.

Press release:

Unions to celebrate May Day in virtual world

May Day (Thursday 1 May) sees the launch of Union Island, an innovative new trade union project to build a home for unions and activists in the virtual world Second Life™.

The University of the West of England Research Observatory project is now complete. As small project much of the challenge lay in designing to a very low primitive count and achieving the aims within the space and resources available. The completed project can be visited here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Education%20UK/44/200/21/

The Brief

To create a naturalistic environment with modern style structures to act as the heart and focus of a community built around trade union activities. The island was to be seen as both a focal point for union activity within Second Life and also as a way of using a virtual world as a communication platform for conferencing and contact between unions accross the world. You can find it in world here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Union%20Island/94/174/27/

With the Union Island project coming to a close (pictures soon), Citrus Virtual has begun work on a small project designing and creating the in-world presence for the Research Observatory of the University of the West of England. The small plot on Education UK island will provide a home for the university department to explore the use of Second Life and virtual worlds as a teaching medium and how to develop a virtual world presence.