google & the national trust: WILDSCOPE
Partnering with the National Trust, this pilot was rewarding in ways I could never have imagined. It’s one of the reasons I started working with children at the Ministry of Stories, and it fuelled my passion for work that lies between creativity and education. The brief was a dream – ‘How can we use technology to engage 10-12 year olds in nature?’. Our answer was a mixed reality experience, mostly set in the real world, partly in the virtual world.
The central theme explores the idea of children reconnecting with their animal selves. But the virtual reality element means kids can experience nature in a way they can’t in reality. They can see the world through an owl’s eyes. Or what it’s like being the size of a minibeast. Or what happens inside a chrysalis when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly (it’s disgusting by the way). Sadly, it never went live (although we did build a prototype). But here's the audio, which I hope gives a sense of the research and storytelling involved.