^{Climate Heroes}

March 2022 - April 2022
Funded by Leeds City of Culture 2023 Seed Funding
Undertaken on behalf of Tutti Frutti

The overall intention of this short explorative project was to test how two online virtual platforms, a chatroom and the online gaming platform- Roblox, could be used to explore the topic of climate change with primary school children in Leeds.

Vitual Chatroom

The first session took place in the Dubit Clickroom. This is an online virtual meeting space for research focus groups. Children were given an avatar and then joined researchers to talk about their interests in climate change. Three short videos were shown as prompts to get them thinking about climate issues in general. Then, more specifically in relation to what it means to be a ‘climate hero’.

The findings of this session led to the development of a unique space in the online gaming platform Roblox.

Roblox

The Roblox space took the form of an urban landscape with prompts to promote further discussion with the same child-participants.

For example, a forest fire was built into the Roblox space as a connection to the video of a forest fire that was shown to them in The Clickroom session:

I then showed the children the bike stands I had built by a school in Roblox and be reminded of their idea to cycle to school, as one way in which they can help make a difference to the climate crisis. This acted as a prompt to think of other ideas for being more sustainable:

Another finding that emerged from children’s conversations in the Clickroom, was their interest in animals and protecting them. This therefore seemed another opportunity to discuss their ideas further in Roblox. To do this, I built a city farm:

Other animals were also scattered around the Roblox landscape for children to find, such as the urban fox below:

A series of avatars were made to respond to tutti frutti’s interest in getting children making with digital and physical materials. We discussed whether children might be interested in designing costumes or masks for climate heroes. Initial avatar designs were posted on billboards in the Roblox space as prompts for further discussion.

Image: Avatar provocations for tree-loving climate hero theme

The video below shows children’s engagement wiht the Roblox space as an area they could use to discuss and play with ideas around the topic of climate change:

Related Talks

Socially-Distanced Games and Play as a means of Remote Data Collection, Remote Sensing, University of the Arts, London 29th April 2022.

Related Publications

Yamada-Rice, D. (in press) Socially-Distanced Games and Play as a means of Remote Data Collection, Remote Sensing Publication.