Contempo Who Now?
What is ContempoPlay? Who are we? What are we hoping to achieve? In order to answer some, frankly, as-yet-unasked questions, I thought I’d write a quick post about what this is all about.
ContempoPlay is…
… talking to parents about how we parent children who are going to have increasingly-digital lives.
We’re a small group of people who are parents that spend our working lives in and around children’s media: either making it or writing about it.
We were sat around after this years Children’s Media Conference, in a pub– this happens every year — saying how we should actually do something about the conversations we’re always having about the challenges of digital parenting.
We understand that the speed and power of the digital world has come from its open and free nature. But as parents, we understand that completely open and free places are often not the best places to leave your children alone in. So how do we walk this line?
The recent ‘Life in Likes’ report here in the UK prompted me to write this post. I saw it as a call to action to help parents give their kids the ‘social and critical awareness’ they need to navigate the digital world.
But what the report only-fleetingly referenced is how lost many of us adults are in that world: it did mention that some children are more worried about their parents’ use of social media than their own. So that’s on our minds too.
We are…
Emma Von Cooper (@em_cooper)
I’ve made games and interactive media for children’s media and lots of other things besides. I’m not a writer, but as we live in an age of writing … so here we are. Despite all the hype THOU SHALT LEARN TO CODE I kind of think you also need to know like a bunch of other stuff. I can code, a bit, enough to understand some of the logic, and some of the processes. I also understand that it’s not the be all and end all. That creativity and humanity actually drives the digital world and without it, or any diversity, the world will very quickly become and increasingly dull place.
Stuart Dredge (@stuartdredge)
IS a writer and has, of course, gone in ALL GUNS BLAZING with articles already because, that’s what he does. He used to write for the Guardian and run a site called Apps Playground, but now writes for music-industry publication Music Ally, The Observer and children’s (print!) magazine The Week Junior, where he writes about apps, games and tech for an audience of 8–12 year-olds – who he constantly worries will already know more about all three than him.
Alice Whitaker (@alleyalley)
Alice is a market researcher, copywriter and blogger who co-founded Apps Playground with Stuart as a site reviewing children’s apps. She used to work in the magazines world too, doing reader surveys and trends research for one of the biggest publishers, Emap. She also has a near full-time job with Stuart making sure their two children don’t give them the runaround when it comes to screen-time rules.
Sharna Jackson (@sharnajackson)
The one and only, she started Tate Kids, wrote art activity books and was the Creative Director at Hopster. Since — and between — then she has worked on a number of frankly rad kids media projects, with a whole range of clients and supporters. Sharna is also a curator — one of her show’s is Playground, an interactive art exhibition for families run in conjunction and love with the Children’s Media Conference.
We are going to …
…start with writing. So for now, you’re mainly going to hear from Alice and Stuart. We’ve talked about launching a podcast, but we also want to organise events. The more digital our working lives have become, the more we’ve realised the power and importance of connecting in the physical world. Meat space is where it’s at! Watch this space…
We want you to …
… join in!
We may all work in media and be able to talk a load of old nonsense, but we’re not saying we have the answers to everything.
In fact, we’re on this journey too: one of my kids is about to face the “cliff-edge of social media” described in the Life in Likes report, and I’m really not sure how we’re going to navigate it. Plus the other child has started accusing me of “sharenting” – posting photos and stories about my kids on social media without asking permission – despite being utterly enthralled by unboxing videos on YouTube.
Basically, we’re exploring all this stuff as parents seeking answers, not as experts dispensing wisdom from on-high. If you have a question you want us to explore or a topic you’d like us to discuss, let us know either on Facebook or Twitter.
