Hi8us & Lisa’s No Pizza

Paul Jenkins, headteacher of Mayfield School approached us last year to find out whether we would like to get involved in their anti-bullying animation project: originally they had planned to work with an animation company to produce a video animation using stop-motion techniques with plasticine figures but the company were unavailable. There have been some fantastic projects done in this way with young people but we felt that online animation had great potential for the subject matter. Making it for online meant that more people would be able to view it easily and it could be made highly interactive. We suggested an animated story that wasn’t strictly linear might benefit the subject matter, allowing users to make choices and see the consequences of the choices made.

The project was a great opportunity for us since we had little experience of working with the younger end of the age group, 10 year olds and young people with special needs. This was particularly important because we had undertaken animation projects before, but mainly with young people 14+, and the skill set is very different. So we had to develop new ways of enabling the Handsworth Schools Group of young people to gain maximum participation and engagement. Paul wanted us to use our online drama improvisation tool, edrama, as part of the project process, enabling young people to develop characters and plot lines further. edrama had never been used with 10 year olds or young people with special needs before. Early on we realised that we would have to adapt edrama for this particular group. Among other adaptions, we introduced sounds and speech synchronised to what the director said online; this made a huge difference. We also made the whole login process visual, instead of the group having to type in user names and passwords.

It was a great experience to work with Sister Tree, Jan Watts and Guy Passey. Sister Tree are so lively and energetic, before we started our workshops, they had already developed a great rapport with the young people. They were very open to suggestions from us and supported us for our part of the process—basically, all the storyboarding, illustration, online and ICT parts of the project. We worked with Jan & Sister Tree to develop the ideas for how the script should work for an animation that would result in different story outcomes. They were enthused by this and before we could blink—Jan had already written the script, with its different story endings, based on the young peoples’ character developments and improvisations. The great thing about having the different endings was that all the young people could create endings for the story—there was no definitive ending!

Guy has done a fantastic job of bringing to life the young peoples’ storyboards and ideas for what the characters should look like. Dave Gray and Andy Anderson at Hi8us have worked well with Guy to colour and produce the final animations and website.

If you would like further information about this project or you would like Hi8us to be involved in your own drama, arts & media projects, please contact:

Kulwant Dhaliwal
Telephone: 0121 693 0242
Email: kulwant

Background to Hi8us Projects Ltd

Hi8us Projects Limited is a registered charity established in 1994 to produce innovative media with young people in their communities.

Hi8us (www.hi8us.co.uk) has a unique record of award winning production for film and television. Over the last nine years the company has pioneered participatory youth drama for broadcast, piloted new media technology as a tool for young people to create interactive drama and supported a series of talented young programme makers to enter the film and broadcasting industries. Hi8us also has substantial experience of working in partnership with schools, colleges, local authorities and regional economic and media development agencies to place the media and cultural industries at the heart of regeneration initiatives.

Hi8us has a strong track-record of working with young people at risk of social exclusion in informal and formal educational settings. Hi8us has worked with young people across the country on media and new media projects. Hi8us TV Dramas were made with a range of young people nationally including, young offenders in Hull Prison, young African-Caribbean people in Hillfields in Coventry and young Asians from Aston, Handsworth and Small Heath in Birmingham.

Hi8us has also undertaken a number of large and small, new media projects with young people and has digital video projects involving music and drama from the East End of London to Yorkshire. Bow by Blow is one such project currently being delivered by Hi8us South (www.hi8us-south.co.uk) in the east end of London. Hi8us Midlands produced Jacked and In the Mix, short one minute digital films made with a group of young people at Lee Bank Youth Club as part of Birmingham City Council’s Youth Start Plus programme.

Hi8us has produced a number of online projects, some involving the development of software. edrama, is an innovative online drama improvisation tool piloted and developed by Hi8us Midlands with significant support from Nesta (National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts – www.nesta.org.uk) and the University for Industry (UFI Ltd – www.ufi.com).

Hi8us Midlands recently completed Animatix, a writing, drama, illustration and online animation project involving young people from Handsworth, Nechells and Aston and a group of young people based in Ludlow in Shropshire. The project not only enabled young people to script and storyboard an animated graphic novel for the web using innovative online and ICT tools but also offered a cultural exchange between the rural and urban based groups. We ran the workshops in Birmingham at the Drum Arts Centre in Aston and we involved a professional writer, Arzhang Pezhman to help develop the scripts and a graphic novel illustrator, John McCrea who illustrates for Marvel and DC Comics—Spiderman and Batman comprising just some of his CV. Young people also planned and delivered a public exhibition event held at the Orange Studio in Birmingham to launch the website (publicity material attached – please see the website at: www.animatix.org). Young people also created much of the content for the website.

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