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Company: Bridge + Tunnel
Project: i-Kooch: Interactive Asylum Narrative Project for Schools

Dates: Jan 2007 to Mar 2007

How did the project start?

Kooch (Farsi for ‘nomad’ or ‘migratory’) is a unique community digital media initiative developed in conjunction with people of Middle Eastern descent currently based in Tyneside (NE of England), initiated by Bridge + Tunnel Productions in 2001. 2006 saw the creation of i-Kooch, an experimental interactive web-based project that enabled participants to gain practical skills using new media tools and technologies, while expressing their unique stories of migration and transition.

Our Aims:

To produce an innovative, substantial, community digital media project using interactive web-based technology and develop narrative construction techniques to convey the often unheard stories of new migrant communities to an intended audience (in the pilot phase- students aged 14-18- as part of schools citizenship curriculum).

Aims:
1. Challenging negative stereotypes of refugee and asylum seekers by humanising the experiences of individuals who live in exile that are often demonised in the national media.

2. Sustaining a platform for i-Kooch members to voice their stories and ideas, creatively and openly. In addition, offering practical skills to individuals as a means to raise self-esteem, aspirations and their own creativity and work experience. Research the web as a potential distribution outlet for community digital media projects.

3. Offering regional schools a comprehensive and interactive tool to enhance the teaching of citizenship modules and allowing young people the opportunity to explore issues of migration, displacement and racism in real terms. To attempt to connect students with refugees in a meaningful dialogue (in real time- using blogs and web chat).

What options did you consider?

I-Kooch is web-based interactive project that can explore techniques of storytelling while finding new audiences (this has lead to our partnership with schools).

We have been fortunate that the site conveys in an evocative way, the stories of the individuals. There is unity and a sense that this tool can be used as a prompt for discussions and other vivid classroom based learning.

We believe we have a compelling project with depth which will engage its audience and bring the desired dialogue that we have sought for this project.

We have found a new distribution outlet and an application for future community digital media projects. We are confident we are one of the few which exists and has the depth we have been able to achieve (even at this pilot phase).

What help and expertise did you receive?

We collaborated with a team of filmmakers, teachers, trainers, computer science consultants, and web designers.

Did you face any challenges or learn any lessons?

We also learnt it is important that the wed designers are involved from day one. The development of the narratives was slightly divorced from the project/web structure and design. In the future we propose to integrate these better. We would encourage the writing tutors to work with the design/technology team. However, this learning was impossible without the prototype (and the fact that we are based in an area of the country with little access to technology support).

We also would like to think more creatively in the future about the use of sound.

We are also looking to embed more technology (i.e, MSN chat, web cams, text messaging, GPS, table-top editing) into structure of the next phase. We are collaborating now with computer scientists at Newcastle University for the next phase.

We are also looking to link the web-presence with another larger project so that there can be a hybrid output. The project is now merging with a Feature Film that is currently being produced.

What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?

We believe that with a very limited investment and our local focus with global aspirations, we have a project which epitomises the ‘Digital Communities’ award. We have found solutions for real social problems with technology. Though our expertise did not lie in this discipline, we have worked over 2 years to realise a project which has little funder support and is politically unsupported (as asylum is a football in the UK) and produced something which is genuinely grown, ambitious, and has the potential for change.

We are also proud that the resulting project is accessible, visually appealing, and emotionally rich. We believe that winning this prize would recognise the value of working against paradigms and conventions and inspire future communities to endeavour into the often intimidating world of interactive web design.

What are your plans for the future?

We are currently developing a larger project called Wiki: Wonderland which expands the skills we have gained on the i-Kooch project.

WiKi: Ali in Wonderland: An on-line story about the journey to adulthood of two teenagers from the Middle-East who arrive in the North-East of England.

But this is a coming of age story with a difference: this interactive website and the film break new ground in that the script is improvised and developed with young people from similar backgrounds to the characters, developed through collaborative working.

WiKi is an innovative youth-led initiative media education project for recent young migrants (including asylum seekers and refugees), aged 13-25, living in the North-East of England.

Over the course of eighteen months, Wiki will enable young people to work alongside film industry professionals to gain media skills while collaborating and working towards a real film production.

This will be achieved through a series of weekly workshops focusing on drama and improvisation, camerawork, sound design, editing, and web-site development.

On the website, Wiki: Ali in Wonderland, you will be able watch the stories of the main characters Ali & Nasrine emerge. What happens to them when they arrive, how do they deal with the difficulties that they face, and how do they learn to make their way in their new home? What conflicts are there in their family environment? And how do they make the transition from innocence to adulthood?

The themes of the story will be familiar to the young people involved, many of whom have themselves made remarkable journeys. Their experiences will inform the development of the fictional elements of the film, bringing authenticity and vitality.

The WiKi project will result in an interactive website hosting a new feature-film length script, which pushes the boundaries of storytelling (and how films are developed) and allows participants to freely draw upon real-life experiences to input into fictional characters and storyboards, encouraging young people to explore their own experiences of migration and settlement in a new culture.

Within the framework of the film, the participants will develop a series of storylines and work collaboratively to create mini film sequences, characters, and dialogue based upon these ideas. These films will then be uploaded onto a WiKi website, which the group will design themselves adding additional elements, perhaps including animation, graphics, photographs, sound, music, and blogs.

The WiKi website will come alive through these various elements much like an animated comic book! Through the WiKi site, the group will also be able to communicate with other young people across the country from similar backgrounds, who may themselves feel excluded within their own communities or isolated because of their experiences.

This project is underpinned by the wiki philosophy (as in Wikipedia), allowing the participants the freedom to edit and add content, create new web pages for the site, link to other websites and have editorial control over their own storyboards. This will be an evolving and exciting process for the online audience and a new method for creating a feature film!