Deb Fox: Hello, and welcome to our Nesta Talks To, our conversational event series with today's most exciting thinkers on the big topics related to our mission and innovation methods. I'd love to make this conversation with you, the audience, as interactive as possible. So please do post any questions in the comments box on the right-hand side of your screen, and we'll try to get through them towards the end of the session. The closed captions are available and can be accessed via the LinkedIn Live stream.

So we are Nesta, the UK's innovation agency for social good. We design, test, and scale solutions to society's biggest problems. Our three missions are to help people live healthy lives, create a sustainable future, where the economy works for both people and the planet, and give every child a fair start.

I'm Deb Fox. I lead Nesta's Art practise, and I'll be your host for this session, exploring the role of storytelling in a digital age and how immersive entertainment can support childhood development.

I'm delighted to be talking to Dr. Dylan Yamada-Rice. Dylan is a Senior Lecturer in Immersive Storytelling in the School of Digital Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University. She also works part time as a Senior Researcher for Dubit, a company specialising in the research and development of digital media for children. Dylan's research sits at the intersection of experimental design and social sciences, focusing on digital storytelling, games, and play on a range of platforms such as apps, augmented and virtual reality, as well as new content for television, all with the emphasis on media for children.

So welcome, Dylan. Perhaps you could kick us off by telling us a bit more about yourself and offer us an introduction into the world of immersive storytelling.

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Great. Thank you so much for inviting me to talk to you today. Yeah, so as you said in the introduction, my work is all focused with children. But I work across academia and industry, and both of those spaces give different insights into what's going on with children in this space.

As you mentioned, the platforms are changing. So the ways in which we might engage with children might include virtual reality. It might include augmented reality. It might include TV, still, for some children. But at the heart of everything that we develop for children, I think storytelling and play are the ways in which we make it immersive, no matter what the platform is.

Deb Fox: Right. Wow. So we really lean on some of your expertise over the course of the next hour, Dylan. Looking forward to it. Looking forward to it. So I guess my first question-- a bit of context, thinking about storytelling, what do you see as the role for storytelling in helping young children's development?

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Yeah, so probably most of your audience won't be surprised if I give the famous quote that storytelling is what makes us human. It's what makes us different from other animals and species on this planet. It's what can engage us in a topic, whether that's fact or fiction.

And a lot of my background's also in interaction design. So if we think of interaction design, we might think about the role of storytelling for education. Or we might think of the role of storytelling for health. Or we might think of storytelling for entertainment. But storytelling is the thread that brings it together.

And I think for children in particular, the ways in which they emerge themselves in the world, make sense of information, is to kind of blend the fact and the fiction more freely than perhaps we do as adults, or maybe we bury it a bit more as adults. So even when you want to share with them really important information, if you can bring the playful and the fiction in with that, then I think it's a way of making it immersive, regardless of the platform.

So, obviously, we're talking about immersive storytelling today. And I remember when I first got my job, which has the title "immersive storytelling" in it, and told my dad-- he was kind of like, well, isn't all storytelling immersive? And I was like, yeah, it's just that today, we've taken it to mean these new technologies. We've taken it to mean AR, VR, the metaverse, all these big words. But actually, "immersive" just means, doesn't it, to be connected to a story, whether that's for health, entertainment, or education, I think.

Deb Fox: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it, as you say the words. The minute you start putting immersive in, arguably, it's always-- that's the whole point of a story is that you become immersed in the subject matter, in whatever that is, whether that's fact or fiction, to a certain extent. But actually, technology now, on the technology that we have at our disposal today, just takes that to another a completely other level. It's an exciting time to be a storyteller and to think about how you can create more opportunities for everyone to experience and bring to life these worlds that we're creating.

Yeah. I mean, I remember being really influenced by a book by somebody called Gunther Kress called Before Writing, and it just talks about how children use whatever materials are around them immediately. So you might pick up a pen. You might bring a toy to it. And for anyone who's watched children watching TV, if you're a parent or so on, you know that kids often sit there, and especially young children, like we're talking about-- they might bring a toy and play alongside it as well, so that kind of mashing together of materials.

And then I think as an adult, trying to design things for children, we have to think in that way too. So we've got this whole array of platforms. We've got all of this technology plus all of this analogue material. Like, how do we use whatever is available to connect to the best part of whatever it is that we want to engage children with?

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Yeah, so to give you an example, I recently developed something a play kit to help children have an MRI scan-- again, part of my role at Dubit. And we needed to think about, how can we get children to stay still? How can we get them to not be scared of the noise of the MRI machine? How can we get them familiar with what a radiographer does? What do they see?

And then we look out and we think, OK, well, we've got virtual reality. We've got augmented reality. We've got an app. We could use physical play. What if we choosed each one of those platforms to connect with a different element? So in the end, we used cardboard, actually, to make an MRI scanner. You can kind of see it myself up there. [LAUGHS]

And that became physical play because it helped children with building and thinking about the shape of the scanner. And then augmented reality became a great way to show them what the radiographer sees when they're being scanned and so on. So that became these different platforms, and you're kind of connecting them, I guess, for the audience, for children, along particular themes. And I think I apply that principle to everything that I help make, design for children.

Deb Fox: Yeah, well, I love that. We're talking about all this kind of high-end high tech, and yet it's the good, old piece of cardboard. It's the loo roll that you happen to find somewhere in the recycling that you just kind of get out and repurpose in some way.

What do you think the-- so all this technology, it can be quite overwhelming, certainly, if you're not used to the various acronyms and endless talk of what the metaverse is or isn't or might be. What do you think the role for technology could be, should be? And how do we best harness it particularly for young children and their learning and development?

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Yeah. I mean, you just mentioned there the toilet roll and the cardboard and on the physical. And I think it's really important, especially for young children, to keep thinking about technologies in relation to analogue materials. We know that young children make sense of the world through physical materials. And even babies pick things up and put them to their mouth and all of those things.

And my work sits really within the digital and emerging technologies. But whenever I'm trying to get children, especially young children, to relate to those technologies, to let me know what they think about these technologies' potential roles in their life, often, I take physical materials as a way for them to be a part of that research.

And I'm increasingly aware more than ever that a lot of children have access to technologies at home more than they might have access to analogue materials for making. So if I take a load of cardboard, quite recently into a museum, and take in VR headsets and so on, actually, it's the cardboard that they're gravitating to to play around with and stuff. It's the exotic.

Whereas for our age, or my age, the computing would have been the exotic. It's almost like it's sort of flipped. But, of course, I'm not antitechnology at all. It's, again, about thinking about, how do we use these to scaffold a way in so that children can become critical of the media and platform and things that are being made for them, which they can't do if they have no understanding of how they're made or how they're designed or how they work? So it's about using those things in combination with each other.

Deb Fox: Yeah. Gosh, that's such an interesting observation and insight that, as you say, we often think that this tech can be quite exclusive. But actually, there's some Ofcom reports out recently were signalling to exactly your point, which is, actually, children, quite a large percentage-- I couldn't find the report to dig out this morning. We've sent you, but it's quite a large percentage of children do have access to tablets and mobile. And those all definitely seem to be the go-to platforms for certainly particularly young children.

And I think it's fascinating. I feel like maybe we should flip the conversation to be, how do you tell storytelling in a cardboard world, perhaps, and really picking up on that natural imagination that young children have and making the most of that? Do you know of anybody-- so it's just something I'm thinking about as you're talking.

Do you know of any research that is showing that, actually, the fact that so many of our young people today are sort of growing up-- they grow up just instinctively knowing how to use technology. Do you think that that's going to start to have unintended consequences? Is there any research? Do we know enough about any of that yet coming down the line? I think it would be absolutely fascinating to start to see and look at what are some of the unintended consequences.

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Yeah. I mean, you raised two points there. One is about using physical materials to design immersive worlds. And I'm just coming to the end of a project now with a great colleague and friend of mine called Eleanor Dare, and we've been looking at the future of broadcast media. So at the end of, for example, CBBC, when that comes off air and becomes something else on a different platform, or we know children are stopping to watch linear TV as much, what comes next? How do we get stories to them?

And so I've been working on a series of workshops with Eleanor, where we've been taking in new technologies and helping children to think about what the future of stories might be in relation to emerging technologies. Well, we've been using just that, so using cardboard and analogue materials to help children explore those things.

So, for example, we've been using The Beano as a kind of case study because The Beano has such long, rich history of being comic to Dennis the Menace on TV to an app, and so on, and so on. Like, if we ask children, what would that be in the future? And we were asking them to create, first of all, characters from The Beano-- how do they think that changed in the future-- out of Play-Doh, but then showing them how they can scan those using photogrammetry apps-- this is something really simple-- and then using those as a digital asset to upload into their own worlds of virtual reality or upload them into their own gaming spaces of Roblox, for example.

And the reason why I think that's so important is that the thing that you mentioned just there. Like, kids are growing up around technologies, and they know how to play games and how to find what they want to watch even before they can write on YouTube and all the rest of it. But how do you get them to a point where they can critique content so that we're making the best quality content for young children? And really, that's only possible if we show them how these technologies work.

And I think that's important because a lot of technology companies are trying deliberately to obscure these to keep them in the domain of professionals. Apple, for example, calls everything Magic something-- Magic Pen, Magic Pad. It's deliberate illusion to make technology feel like it's just out of your reach, but actually, it's not.

Even these young children that we're working with-- when they see how photogrammetry works, when you show them how a VR headset is made, begin to think about the possibilities of what they wish existed on that platform. And that's where it gets really exciting because, no matter how childish I am, being able to hear what children themselves want from these platforms is super exciting.

Deb Fox: Yeah, that is. What do they want? What do they want?

Well, according to this latest project that we're working on, they want to do that mash-together that we've just been talking about of different materials, but also of their favourite characters. So we're talking about Beano, and they're like, yeah, but what if SpongeBob was in there too? Like, why wouldn't SpongeBob meet Dennis the Menace?

So again, as adults, we're really trying to think about monetizing these spaces, which we have to do, of course, to create them. But yeah, kids are like, let's mash it all together-- playful, I guess. They're playful. Yeah.

Deb Fox: I love that, because it is. Again, it's just, why can't you just put these two things together? And as adults, you say, oh, well, you know, copyright, legally, you can't. And you suddenly have all of this adult framing.

Dylan Yamada-Rice: But actually, just to be able to let children and young people's imaginations run wild, which is really where the likes of Minecraft and Roblox and the creative economy, is really kind of starting to take hold and why we're seeing such huge numbers, because not only can children and young people control what's built in those environments. They can invite all their friends along as well and make it a really social experience, which I just think is absolutely fascinating.

So I'm going to give you a quote here from the-- we're just going to go back in time a moment. I'm just going to give you a quote from the Sesame Street Workshop website, which says, "In 1969, Sesame Street Workshop's founders asked a single bold question-- could television"-- then an emerging technology-- "be used to educate kids? With a diverse cast, a research-based curriculum, and some instantly iconic characters, Sesame Street sought to answer that question and changed children's television forever." Exciting.

Deb Fox: So given how far we've come since 1969-- let's double-check that. Yeah, 1969. The technological leaps, the societal shifts that we've experienced-- is it time to ask that question of immersive storytelling and immersive entertainment?

I mean, there's a couple of things in there that come to mind when you ask that question. First of all, Sesame Street for me-- if you say, Sesame Street-- like, I love Sesame Street. As a kid, as a teenager, even, I think, I remember going to London from Cornwall, where I grew up, to go and see a Sesame Street exhibition and coming home as a 15-year-old, going to my mum like, I just met Elmo, you know? And I think those things, like how attached we can remember our feeling to characters that we loved from childhood, is and of itself a question about immersivity, isn't it?

Like, yeah, I could describe to you everything about Elmo, probably, even still now. Like, in my take of Elmo, you know of why I liked Elmo, or why I like Grover, or how his arm was too narrow to hold up tea towels in certain sketches, and all of these things that connect us to stories. So that's one of them is around the quality. I mean, to be able to do that-- I mean, there's no doubt that that's a very, very high quality TV series.

But the other thing, I think, is around the division that we place between entertainment and education, which doesn't really need to be there in the way that we create it. And I think, often, when we make edgy games or things that we label as educational, we remove that deep delve into story narrative or to character design, which makes it more dull.

And it's a little bit like-- I used to get travel sickness as a child, and my parents would hide the travel sickness pill on strawberry jam so that I wouldn't notice it was there, but you knew it was there. And I think kids are like that. They know you're trying to teach them the alphabet, and they're kind of like, well, I'd rather play Minecraft or rather play Roblox. So we need to get smarter-- not smarter, but we need to stop dividing the two in such a strong way. So I think that's another point.

But then with new technologies, I think, of course, we're going to use them to educate, to-- I mean, I've written down those three things that you said Nesta was, so there's healthy life, fair start, sustainability. Like, addressing those things-- this is just an extension with new platforms, new technologies, to all the work that we've done before.

So I guess, again, if we were to think about Sesame Street, maybe a question to you or the audience, but what would be the best virtual reality experience of Sesame Street? And what would make it different than Sesame Street the TV show or Sesame Street the app or Sesame Street the cuddly toy or having my favourite Sesame Street T-shirt? It's the connection, again, between platform and narrative and the reason why we're making that narrative. Sorry, that was a lot there. [LAUGHS]

Deb Fox: No. No, no. There's so many things I could begin to think there. But, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it-- that divide that you say where, if something's educational, is it entertaining? And how do you blend both? Because kids are smart, and they can see it. And so the more upfront you're being about educationally what you're going to do-- so we're going to count with-- what is it in Sesame Street? It's the-- The Count.

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Yes, it's the Count.

[LAUGHTER]

It's the Count, the Count.

1. [LAUGHS LIKE THE COUNT]

Deb Fox: [INAUDIBLE] And it's just-- yeah, it's been engaging and clever and fun in the way that creatives are, the way that the creative industry is-- does that so well. But do you know what? And that's OK. If you learn to count from 1 to 10, with the Count, then why not? But do you think it's important to be explicit about it rather than--

Dylan Yamada-Rice: I don't know if you need to be explicit, but the reason that you learn to count with the Count is because you love the Count, you know? He's a great character. He's funny. You are invested in the Count and his life, and that's how you learn to count.

So, yeah, if you think about other types of apps, where maybe you trace numbers or something, and that story design, that character design, and so on isn't there, then it becomes a chore, like a worksheet might do in a school. So again, you can say there's a time and place for everything, and maybe there's a point at which-- I mean, I don't know if I'd ever say there's a point in which a worksheet would suffice for anything. But I think, yeah, again, if you think about virtual reality, for example, some of the worst virtual reality experiences I've had are where they could have done something better had it have been on the TV.

So some of the best experiences I've had, for example, the National Theatre had an Immersive Storytelling unit. I don't know if it still exists. But they were doing Alice in Wonderland production, and there was a whole bit where you would put on the headset, and you'd fall down a toilet inside virtual reality. And when you came out the other end, you were in the tea party with the Cheshire Cat.

And actually, you could only experience that in that way in virtual reality. So you bought into that experience as being amazing because if you watch the Cheshire Cat having his tea party on the TV, then there's a distance between you and the Cheshire Cat. So it's, again, about thinking about, what is possible with each of these technologies? And how do you harness the best of them, I suppose? Yeah.

Deb Fox: Yeah, I mean, you're so right. I've been down those rabbit holes, to just do an Alice in Wonderland metaphor, so many times where I think many of us in the industry can get carried away with the tech, or what can the tech do, or be led by the tech. And of course, it's always about the storytelling. What it's always about-- you've got to get back to what's the story that you're trying to tell, and how does the tech lend itself or enable storytelling in an entirely new way.

And I think-- I mean, I'm certainly been guilty in the past of kind of, ooh, what's this shiny thing? And what can I do with it? And that doesn't always necessarily create the best experiences for anyone, for any audiences.

Yeah. I guess you need to play around with those things, don't you, on both ends so you get the shiny thing. I mean, I want to try some shiny things too. And you see what's possible to do with that shiny thing. And at the same time, you're thinking about, what do I actually want to develop, design, and make for kids?

So, I mean, yeah, if a student wants to come to me and say, I want to make an augmented reality experience, and I would say, what about? And they'd say, I don't know yet. Then I would say, well, that's a problem because if you want to choose the topic and what you want to do, and then after that, match that to whatever technology is the best way of sharing that.

Deb Fox: Yeah, that's great advice to your students. You get a bit of like, hmm, hmm, kind of look. But, well, no, but I want to do the augmented reality thing. I don't really care about the story. [LAUGHS]

But I think there's also-- it's a problem with education at the moment too, which also comes back to early childhood and so on is that we're separating out physical arts from digital arts, definitely in higher education. But then we're also calling the arts kind of-- I can't even remember what you call it now, like a secondary subject, not an important subject.

Whereas STEM and STEAM are seen as core and essential. But actually, as an artist, we don't make those divisions. And if we do, we're probably poorer for them. So I think we're also failing kids by kind of separating out those two things as well. So they see, OK, well, this is engineering, and this is with tech, but actually, this is boring, so that's nothing, you know?

Deb Fox: Yeah, gosh. That's a whole 'nother Nesta talk that we should book in for the future, but I'll get towed off if you don't keep us on track and on point. So you mentioned earlier about designing for children creating for children.

Yeah.

The thorny subject of co-creation, I guess-- I'd be keen for you to share your experience and what your research has found in how you co-create really well. So at Nesta, we're big believers in co-creation-- design with your audiences, design with the people that you're trying to support, with the people with lived experience.

But it's very rewarding but also very challenging, very, very challenging, to get it right and to do it well and to have something meaningful at the end of it and wrestling with creative tensions over social impact, over artistic excellence. And how do you do it? Well, how do you bring it all together, particularly in the context when you're trying to deliver a social outcome? What's your experience of how-- how do we bring more academics and researchers and educators and artists together to create experiences for development in children?

Dylan Yamada-Rice: I mean, I think co-creation-- most of my work is co-creation based, and I think it serves, again, a really important role at the moment in relation to the direction of new technologies, which can scrape data off the back end of them about children's lives. And that scraped data is then used to inform the next products that are made for children.

But how do we know that that information-- how do we know the why of that? Why are kids watching cat YouTubes and then go to play Minecraft? How do we know the why of that without involving them? How do we get actually innovation rather than kind of looping around the same design processes without including children in these processes of co-design?

And I also think, for young children, they don't communicate in the same way as us. So you ask me a question, and I try to give a big picture, and then maybe some smaller details. But they might pick what might appear to be random topics, unconnected to each other, and talk about them.

But actually, they are connected, but they're not presenting what they know in the same way as adults do. And I think that's why, if we were to interview them, even to try and sit down and have a conversation with them-- obviously, a survey would work with very young children, very well. So we kind of need these playful methods of co-creation in order to bring young voices into the work that we create for them, I think.

And for me, at least the way I do that is to try to use my making and my playing with the new shiny things all with children. So yeah, I guess the example I gave earlier of the future media project of kind of getting children making, also then seeking their ideas about what might be the future of The Beano at the same time. So those are kind of the messy making methods I use for co-creation.

I think the second point you made about how do we bring academics, designers, children, parents into the same space-- again, I think making them play are quite levelling because if you have a conversation, you've already set up this kind of power bindery of I'm the expert in this, or you're the expert in that, and you have to break through those. Whereas if you're presented with materials for making and talking at the same time, it kind of breaks that down those, power differences as well.

But we have to just be really open, I think, don't we, to each other's knowledge and expertise, and also embrace the mess. Like you said, it can be really challenging. And often, the best research I've done-- I've planned it all out, and then when you're in the field, as it were, doing it, there's a point at which the child tries to take it in a completely different direction. And you're thinking, no, no, no, no, because I want these answers.

And when I was a younger researcher, I found that really scary, I guess. But now I think-- I realised that if you let go, you often get back a lot more as well. But that courage, I think, just comes from having done these practises for a while now. Yeah.

Deb Fox: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? What's your advice if you're a small creative studio, and you're trying to deliver something? How do you balance that? How do you have the courage to let go while still keeping it on time, on budget?

And equally if you're a charity, and you want to work with creatives and artists to convey something, how do you make that work when-- I've often been in-- I've been on both sides of that coin, and you sort of, oh, just trust the creative process. No! I can't trust the creative process, because I need to deliver something. So how do you-- yeah, from either side, how do you get it right?

Also, audience, please do post your questions. Post your questions, because I will come to some of them shortly. But yeah, how do you get it right? Because we all ultimately want different things. But at the heart of it are young people and supporting young people.

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Yeah, usually, at least in my work, the thing that's in common is wanting to make a great product for children, right? That's what's going to make it popular. That's what's going to sell it, all of these things. I would say, if you're a designer or developer, try not to do the research yourself. Try to work with someone who is a researcher because that's the bit they'll be passionate about. And then for a researcher, they get really excited to see how their research is used within a product. So there's a natural collaboration or desire to collaborate there.

But I think also, it's just even if you let go of the-- and say, let go, to the creative process, you've got to keep your research questions in mind. Like, you've got to know what it is that you want to find out. So even in the mess of all the workshops in the museum based on The Beano and stuff, we wanted to know, fundamentally, what did children think would happen when TV ends?

What do they think would be the role of new technologies in their life? Are they interested in emerging technologies? Are they still interested in analogue technologies? There were things that are running through that when you've got the data, you'll return back to it and pull that out so you can use it for something in the future as well. So it's just a balance, isn't there, I think.

Deb Fox: Yeah, and as you said earlier, embracing the messy and just kind of going with it. Build it into your timeline. It'll be the practical manifestation of that. But what do you think are-- well, actually, no. I'll come back to that in a moment. What are you noticing about some of the barriers to use in tech?

I mean, we've talked about how young people are just-- they know how to use the tech now, but maybe they don't interrogate it quite as much. And actually, they're incentivized not to interrogate the tech that they're using. I mean, I just from my own lived experience as a parent, I have two young children, and they want to be in Roblox. Their friends are in Roblox. They want to be a part of that community.

And I don't want to hold them back with that, but when my oldest goes into Roblox, there's part of me as a parent that just thinks, I've got no idea as a parent, whether you're playing with Sam the 7-year-old or Sam the 17-year-old. And I think that, as a parent, as an adult, can be quite a scary place. But what are you seeing as some of the barriers and challenges to where we're heading with immersive tech and storytelling and young people, and just kind of making it all work, really?

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Yeah. I mean, absolutely, we've got to keep children safe online, and probably listeners will be really familiar with the work of Sonia Livingstone and stuff in that space. And if people are really interested in that, I would certainly direct you to her five rights work and so on for thinking more about that.

I heard at the Children's Media Conference last summer-- I can't remember where this statistic came from, but it was something like, 23% of children didn't have any access to the internet in areas of the North, where I'm situated, during lockdown and COVID. So again, I think there's some things around-- we've talked about kids growing up with tech all around them, but also that digital divide.

And we know right now in England, with the cost of living crisis and all of these things that are playing out that how do we keep children safe? But how do we also keep them included? How do we bridge things for children who don't have access to Wi-Fi? How can we make sure that they're still involved in the design of things that understand how digital technologies are emerging and changing and so on?

I've slightly lost my thread now, Deborah. [LAUGHS] I need you to bring me back. What was I going to say? No, the digital divide, isn't it, really? This digital divide, and how do you ensure that these experiences are inclusive and that you're not leaving millions of children and families behind, really, in this evolution of the technology, because there is the risk of that?

So I think, again, like some of the work we're doing most recently of using photogrammetry-based apps and things to make digital assets that can be used in virtual worlds, these bypass some of the need to perhaps use high-end software, such as Blender, that we might use to make digital assets for children, that actually probably only require a phone, although be it still a new phone. But yeah, again, trying to think of ways in which the analogue materials can help children understand those digital processes.

And again, at the same Children's Media Conference last summer, I heard and was really shocked-- I guess because I'm making stuff-- that it's a very low number of children who take the opportunity to use, for example, Roblox Studio to make their own games. So even though the platform was set up for children to make games for other children, we know, then, that adults are now encroaching in this space.

So a statistic that came out at work the other day was 147 million children a week are in Roblox. Now, you know that all the kids are there. So of course, adults are now going to be there, designing and making things for them. But then if only 11% of kids are choosing to make their own content in Roblox, then you've got a weird gap going on there as well in how they understand the properties of the platform and what's possible to make in that platform, and then to sort of critique what's being made for them as well.

So I guess in my mind, if I'm thinking to the future, how can we bridge that digital divide? But also, how can we get kids wanting to make their own stuff with digital technologies so that they can remain in the mix, competing against adults, who are making stuff, often to advertise things to them, of course, and make money from them in these spaces that started off as a space for children to make for children?

Deb Fox: Yeah, wow. Wow. So I've just seen a question pop up from Kiran, which I'm just going to ask, and then I'm going to leap back into something else. I wanted to ask you about impact. But "what do you feel are some of the best touchpoints for tech/physical/digital in the reading journey in order to encourage better uptake of reading and a reading journey?"

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Oh, yeah, great question. Again, I suppose I would see reading as literacy practise as one part of communication skills. And I'd probably think of where does reading and writing come in with image, audio, and all of these other things. So how can we encourage reading and writing with the affordances of these other technologies?

So slightly, I think it comes back to the Count and to Sesame Street. Can you use a digital platform to bring people back to a book, for example? Do we need to bring them back to a book? That's a controversial comment, probably. Of course, at the moment, the way formal education is set up, we need kids to be reading physical books as well.

But I remember when Kindles first came out, and everybody was like, OK, this is going to be the end of books as we know it. There are going to be no bookshops anymore. We actually knew that it drove sales in physical books because people might find something online and then think, actually, I'm going to go now to the bookshop and see what else is being written.

So I think in the reading journey, again, Minecraft's a great example. Kids might start off making something in Minecraft and think, I'm going to go now and buy a Minecraft book and read it, so that whole kind of cross-platform thing. That might teach them something about how to build something in Minecraft, and it might take them back into Minecraft.

So again, I think it's about not separating books out. I mean, as someone who likes to read, it's hard to imagine that you don't want to just pick up a book and read. But for children who don't like reading, it's, how can you use platforms to allow them to dip in and out of that? How can you harness their love of another communication platform to bring them back to really wanting to read something, anything, I think. Yeah.

Deb Fox: Yeah. Yeah, wow. I've just seen another great question here as well. I don't have a name. It just says "LinkedIn User," but "Just wondering what ages you tend to focus on? I mainly work with 14- to 19-year-olds, and we tend to step away from 'play' at this age, but I think there's still room for it, but in a different way. I'm listening to what you're saying through that lens."

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Yeah. Most of my work is with children under 10, so that's the kind of interest for me. Although, I would say, going right up to teenagers on the work that I do with Dubit, for example, I would say teenagers are still very much into play and storytelling, and even just looking at the number of pop-up board game cafes.

And again, wanting to come back to physical play, just have a look at LEGO. LEGO sold-- they were one of the biggest physical toy sellers during lockdown-- so again, that need to unwind and play and the sets that they make for adults, as well as teenagers and children and so on.

I think even as adults, don't we all try to find playful spaces that allow us just to survive this world? And we tell stories and share stories. So harnessing that, I think, is powerful for all ages, but I'm a little bit prejudiced there.

Deb Fox: Yeah, it's interesting, because I was reading an article recently about the rise of the immersive arcades that we're seeing and tapping into the experience economy and thinking about actually transforming the high streets, our struggling high streets, into opportunities for more of that experience, but collective experience as well, which I think, arguably, sometimes virtual reality, in particular, can come up against criticism all.

So I've just seen a great question here. Gosh, I'm sorry if I'm going to pronounce your name wrong. Katazemya? Apologies if that's really wrong. "You mentioned children watching TV"-- earlier. "In this regard, I'd like to ask about introducing children to current affairs, whether it's advisable, and how to do it, especially when current affairs, including war, the Russia-Ukraine war, for instance. Can storytelling help introduce difficult subjects?" Great question.

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Yeah it's a really great question. I mean, it's all around kids, isn't it? Now, I mean, I often go through periods where I try not to engage with the news because I find it affects me so badly. But even if I tried to tune out of the news, lots of things still reach you via whatever platform, you know? And I think that's the same for children as well.

So when my son was little, and Brexit-- sorry, this is probably a negative topic, but the voting for whether Brexit or not was going to happen-- he came home, and he was in junior school, and he was talking about how in the playground, they were kind of segregating themselves out as to who would vote for what. And at the time, he was probably, like, eight. And I remember thinking, well, that's quite surprising that that's a playtime conversation.

But I think, again, children are interested in these big world topics. They're trying to make sense of it. They're hearing adults talk about it. So to ignore it-- I think it is problematic. So again, creating spaces of which children can ask questions about what they're hearing and giving them honest answers is the way that I personally would approach it.

Again, a lovely colleague of mine, Adam MacDubber-- he's just been to a big conference in the States and came back and said that the big topics of this kids conference there was just how low kids are in general at the moment, having been in isolation during COVID and then coming out into all of these issues and being aware of war, the earthquake, the Chinese balloons in the States because, obviously, this conference is in the States. And trying to make sense of all of these things-- I mean, it's heavy stuff. So definitely finding space for them to be able to talk about that, I think, is really important.

And in a way, that comes back to the future of broadcast TV. If there's no public broadcast TV for kids anymore, how do we bring about that serendipity of engaging with news and topics that are not led by algorithms? And I think that's a really big thing in keeping kids healthy too.

Deb Fox: Yeah, I agree. It's really challenging, isn't it, to know the role of public service broadcasting and the fact that, as you said earlier, [INAUDIBLE] is moving online. And what's that balance there when-- audiences are changing. We know that. But actually, how do you strike that balance? And how do you keep it still very accessible and still play an important role?

Interesting question from Chris Thompson. "Lots of research I've seen about the effectiveness of immersive technology is about one-off events where there's a strong 'novelty' impact. Are we starting to learn about longer term interaction?"

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Again, we did, I think, one of the first studies at Dubit of children in VR. You can actually find it online-- it's called the "Children and Virtual Reality" report-- and download it for free. We tested lots of different types of content with children and lots of different types of headsets, so from cardboard to high-end devices at the time, and so on. It's a little bit old now. We did it in 2015, but there's still very little happening in that space.

As a follow-on research project, we gave a load of children the PlayStation VR headset, and they could use the content, and they could keep it for a month in their homes to try to find that thing of like, if it's not a novelty anymore, do you keep going back? And do you keep using it?

And actually, there were a lot of barriers to use for children. One is that parents are still really nervous about what are they looking at, and they don't particularly want to play the content themselves, but also really worried about kids falling over and getting injured of playing with VR, so they would let kids play because they were taking part in a research project but ask them to sit down for the duration of the time they were playing in VR, which almost then defeats the purpose of VR if you can't get up and move around inside the content.

Deb Fox: So there are still a lot of barriers. I haven't checked in on the latest work that's going on in that space. But I agree with you that, yeah, long term, how might it fit into children's lives is super interesting and needs more work for sure.

Yeah. Nic Hodgkinson's asked the question. "I'm curious how children and young people will embrace technology to develop their own narratives, or even economies, or interact with each other over long distances in regards to an alternative or conventional 'top-down' media mechanism. Historically, counterculture and 1980s comp gaming spring to mind. How will they blow our minds or upset our sensibilities with AR/VR/XR and AI/NFTs/blockchain, et cetera, and will it co-exist inside or outside mainstream narratives?" Wow.

Dylan Yamada-Rice: That's an amazing question. I mean, go kids. I really, really, really hope that they mess up what the adults have created for them. That's always, always my hope. I do think that it's going to be a small minority, unless we can get kids into even Roblox Studio, making and experimenting in these spaces.

So you can only really cause that kind of mess when you're really driven to explore the possibilities beyond what is shown to you. So we need to get them to be makers and doers in these spaces, not just users of content that have been created for them. And I guess that that's the role of adults.

I mean, again, using this future media project as an example, the things that kids told us about the future was they want it to be social. There's the online platforms that are social. I mean, that's one of the reasons they love Roblox is they can chat with friends, or Minecraft. So how can it be social?

And then how can they mash together all their favourite bits? So again, Dennis the Menace and SpongeBob-- so all of those things-- I think kids are doing it in small ways, but we need to up, really, to get them going on that. So I forgot who asked that question. Go, go, go, get the kids going.

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Deb Fox: All right, we'll take one more question from these fantastic, fantastic questions that we received. And then I must keep us at time and wrap us up, but so James is asking, "Would you agree with Henry Jenkins that schools should fill the participatory gap, or would you lean towards Michelle Cannon's thinking that afterschool clubs will drive this area of development?"

Dylan Yamada-Rice: I'm going to try to narrow down what I would say out loud. Education for me at the moment-- and I'm sorry, this will go-- a lot of you who are educators, you're doing an amazing, amazing, amazing job. But it is so up against all the things that need to be fulfilled in terms of curriculum and assessment and monitoring, the endless assessment of kids, that those spaces for experimentation, I think at the moment, in my mind-- they exist outside of school, in afterschool clubs, or anywhere else that you can find community centres, museums, homes.

But if we're going to do the work of getting children fired up to solve these big world issues and make content and things that help for sustainability and better health further down the line, then probably this work at the moment is most likely to happen for most people outside of schools. And that's really sad. I feel sad saying that. But that's how I see it at the moment.

Deb Fox: Well, I'm not going to end on a sad note, so to host quickly the last final question. Where next? Where next? What's really going to make the difference for millions of families struggling with the day-to-day, stressed out with the challenges that many face? What's going to help give every child the same opportunity and to thrive and really create that fairer start?

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Yeah, I mean, the exciting thing-- and actually, I can see in the chart here from Peter from Studio Liddel-- is I think technologies do definitely have the opportunity to help with education, to help with training, to help with some of these big world problems, to make things fairer.

I guess exciting thing for me is, how do you bring kids into that process themselves? So looking back to that person's comments from two comments back of how do we fire the kids up to change and think in ways that are different from adults-- for me, that's the exciting thing, and that's the thing that I think if I could encourage or work with people to really explore that further, then, yeah, that's the future, I think.

Deb Fox: Yeah, yeah. Wow, thank you. Audience, I'm sorry if I didn't get your question. I feel like we needed another hour to dig in, and definitely be up for making this more interactive, walk our talk and make this bit more interactive next time and be able to actually have a conversation with the audience.

But really, all that remains is for me to thank you, Dylan, thank the wonderful audience. This has been a really interesting discussion-- great questions and provided so much food for thought. I hope everyone has enjoyed the conversation and found it useful. We've barely scratched the surface of such a big topic.

But now that we have reached the end of the event, I'd be really grateful if you could fill in the survey, which I think a link is going to be posted in the chat on the various platforms that you're on. And as a thank-you for filling out the survey, you'll be entered into a prize draw to win a 50-pound book voucher. So do head over and fill out the survey for us.

Our next episode of Nesta talks will be on Thursday the 2nd of March. We'll be sitting down with Christian Bunting, founder of 50 Things to Do Before You're Five. Oh, gosh, 50 things. We'll be discussing practical initiatives that can improve children's outcomes. So do sign up to the Nesta newsletter if you haven't already, and we'll let you know when this event is live. I'm sure it's going to be a fascinating conversation.

So yeah, thank you. Thank you again, everyone, for joining. Thank you so much, Dylan. This has been a whistle-stop tour. I didn't even get to half of my questions that I wanted to get through. But, yeah, fabulous, and let's do again soon, and thank you.

Dylan Yamada-Rice: Thanks so much. And just to say, if anyone wants to follow up on anything, you're welcome to reach out to me via LinkedIn as well. Thanks for listening.

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