My Media, My Power, My World
by Sheida Tanhai
I have had the pleasure of working as the Digital Media Assistant on the project being undertaken by a fantastic team in the School of Education (Dr Ryan Bramley, Dr Sabine Little, Hannah Raine and Adeline Choo), working with Holistic Think Tank to create an Interdisciplinary School Subject called ‘My Media, My Power, My World’, for primary school aged children around the world.
Holistic Think Tank’s goal is to transform schools “… into a place conducive to finding happiness in the future.” Our Interdisciplinary School Subject is designed to promote conscious and active participation in social life. We aim to teach children how to find themselves in relation to the world, nature and their own body and to enable their self-development in terms of personality, intelligence, sensitivity, and worldview. We want to show pupils how to plan their own life path and manage inevitable changes. Another aim is to familiarise them with the ideas of science and learning through the ability to analyse data and formulate conclusions. We want to give them the tools to navigate the world beyond the school and redefine in their own terms what it means to be successful and happy.
My goal when starting work on the project was to inspire students to ‘find happiness’, and to represent this idea of coming to know the world around us, the people around us and ourselves. I aimed to display this through the artwork I created and the character designs I developed for the Interdisciplinary School Subject. I was inspired by the notion that finding happiness is knowing and accepting ourselves and others for who they are and what they believe.
In the early stages I worked on the more aesthetic aspects of the media focusing on forming a coherent style and theme for the lessons and creating an engaging colour scheme, font design and graphics that were to remain consistent through every PowerPoint, worksheet and booklet.
Much of the inspiration for the media I created for the project came from the broad scope of lesson material created by the two Research Associates on the project, Adeline Choo and Hannah Raine. Adeline and Hannah researched and wrote up an impressive 59 fully formed lessons plans for primary school teachers to use in their classes, with topics ranging from:
· Talking about racism in society
· This is Me (How do I learn?)
· How environmentally friendly is our school
· Being Safe Online
· Migration and Forced Migration
· Favourite ways to learn
· Talking about privilege
These topics formed a vision for the digital media I planned to create. The themes of inclusivity and equality inspired me to create character illustrations that could be related to by every individual that worked with them.
My goal was to make efforts to represent as many individuals from various races, genders, and abilities as possible, whilst including physical and aesthetic aspects in these characters that could potentially make a child or even a teacher feel seen and related to. Making this effort helped me feel as though the small contribution I was making to this project was meaningful.
It has been so exciting working on ‘My Media, My Power, My World’ and being a part of the fantastic team that worked to bring it all together. I really look forward to seeing what comes next.
