The Youthful Cities Digital Storytelling Lab is a unique creative development programme that has brought together a team of young creatives – filmmakers, digital artists, writers, musicians and changemakers from Coventry and Nairobi – in a cultural and creative skills exchange to develop two new digital stories designed to inspire change within their cities.
The young people joined the Digital Storytelling lab in July 2021 and took part in a specially devised learning programme, designed to introduce them to a range of cutting-edge immersive storytelling techniques, tools and platforms. Working with a suite of tools from BBC MakerBox, the teams created two new short-form immersive and interactive digital experiences.
Our Daily Bread and Now that I know things, explore issues such as youth unemployment and life post-graduation and make use of data from the Youthful Cities Index.
Our Daily Bread is an interactive short film, made using BBC R&D StoryFormer, that explores different city themes and how they impact a young individual’s mental health state whilst going through the hurdles of job hunting. In this experience, audiences can make choices about how the story unfolds and move between scenes set in Nairobi and those set in Coventry.
Now that I know things is a spatial audio experience, made using BBC R&D’s Audio Orchestrator, that follows the range of thoughts, feelings and experiences of Aisha in Nairobi and Sara in Coventry as they navigate their graduation days. The project uses connected smart devices; laptops, tablets and phones to deliver an immersive audio experience that listeners can explore.
Try them out on BBC Taster
Young people involved in the project:
Millan Tarus, Tracy Mwaura, Mike W. Khakame, Analo Kanga, Naserian Koikai, Precious Narotso, in Nairobi and James Grubb, Lanaire Aderemi, Demy Jozeph, Michael Mihoc in Coventry
The Youthful Cities Digital Storytelling Lab is a unique partnership between Coventry City of Culture Trust, British Council, The Space and BBC R&D to create new media to inspire change in Coventry and Nairobi. It is also part of a wider programme between Coventry UK City of Culture, the British Council and Youthful Cities to facilitate a cultural and creative skills exchange between young people across the globe.
