Immersed in Youths’ Stories of Toronto: The Power of VR Storytelling was an event that occurred on November 26th that walked through a two and a half year research project that turned into an immersive VR experience with installations at events such as Nuit Blanche and Regent Park Film Festival in 2019. One of the overarching purposes of the project was to highlight the voices of younger artists by turning their stories into VR installations that the public could engage with. This occurred by connecting youth with storytellers and a design team, who then transformed the stories that the youth chose to tell into virtual reality. This also provided a chance to get a small glimpse of the lived experiences of others, which brought along great insight and awareness to those who interacted with the installations.
Dr. Chris Jackman, Academic Chair of Arts and Design at Centennial, as well as the creator and lead of the project, describes in a bit more detail how the project was originally formed and the outcomes it achieved. He says, “The project was funded through a grant that we secured by NSERC called the College and Community Social Innovation Fund, which funds research projects that explore opportunities for engagement between colleges and the communities they serve. At the time, we had recently started delivering our performing arts programs at Regent Park, and so we were building our relationship with Artscape. As we learned more about their programs, we found some great opportunities for collaboration, specifically the Ada Slaight Youth Arts Mentorship Program, where young artists are often, but not exclusively, from the Regent Park community.”
Chris also describes the capabilities that VR is capable of. He says, “As a school and as a college, we were very interested in looking at VR, and for me, something that I find really fascinating about VR technology is the way it provides people with a different experience of the medium. As the research shows, it often inspires feelings of empathy towards the subject and understanding from an audience member, as it gives the spectators/participants the opportunity to digitally put themselves in someone else’s shoes. A major problem with VR is that the capital and technical expertise required to create VR experiences is so substantial. Which means that while we all recognize the importance of elevating the stories of persons who may be coming from marginalized communities, and while the potential for VR to elevate these stories is especially exciting, there doesn’t tend to be a lot of opportunities for those stories to be told in this medium which might be especially impactful. Through conversation with Artscape and with a lot of our faculty, we developed and secured proposals for this project which was approved and funded for the past two and a half years to work with young artists, introducing them to VR technology, and then creating and ultimately presenting two fully formed VR experiences led by youth creators.”
While developing the project, Chris says that it was a cooperative effort from faculty, as well as students in the Game Art program, the Broadcasting program, and Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Services (ARIES). He explains, “This was a massively complex undertaking that involved stakeholders from multiple organizations working with a range of young artists across multiple facilities. It was a significant undertaking, but I was incredibly heartened to find that at every level of the project, there was a common commitment to equity, inclusion, and the importance of elevating the voices and perspectives of young artists. For me, I think that is the most exciting part of social innovation research, where new knowledge and understanding is produced in a way that really compliments personal and institutional values.”
Dr. Lauren Wolman, Social Innovation Research Manager at ARIES, also played a role in this project. She came on while the project was underway and says the project originally started as a way to explore the lived experience of youth living in Regent Park and to, therefore, start a conversation around Regent Park. She says, “Toronto is a moving part, and we can’t assume that people who do things in Regent Park, live in Regent Park.” In fact, the project team found out that a lot of the youth who utilize the Ada Slaight Youth Arts Mentorship Program were actually from the GTA. This realization allowed the project to really broaden its scope. “What’s great about that is we got a lot of great outcomes from this project that didn’t necessarily start with where we started, but I feel like we pivoted with it and got some really great insight. We also grew as a team to understand what you can measure and what you can’t measure.”
In reference to that, Lauren mentions how you can’t assume what young people are going to talk about. When it came to the youth crafting their stories to turn into VR installations, it was important to remove any assumptions of what they were going to choose to discuss. She says, “We can’t assume what young people are going to share. The idea that racialized youth would talk about being racialized is really unfair, and I think we need to give youth the autonomy to tell the stories that they want to tell, and those stories will either resonate with you or not, which I think really speaks to intersectionality.”
Lauren describes two pieces of the project that really stood out. The first piece involves: looking at virtual reality as a means of storytelling. The second piece involves: exploring the lived experience of young people from Toronto. Based on a survey the project team conducted, they found that out of 100 or so participants who went to the VR installations, that 99.89% said virtual reality is an effective means of storytelling. This demonstrates that VR is providing such a transformational way of sharing art and doing it in a way that can carry importance and meaning.
Direct quotes from those who attended the installations include, “Everywhere I looked, I was part of the story” and, “It allowed me to be in the voice’s shoes. I could see and experience it as if I was really there.” Above are pictures from one of the installations to give you an idea of what participants saw.
Toolkits have also been created, which Lauren says are to help share the knowledge from the project. “The whole point of the toolkits is to be able to share those findings both within academia and local organizations that might want to consider those projects, but also with VR designers as a way to consider their best practices working with underrepresented groups.” Chris also describes how the toolkits can help make an impact, as he says, “We are releasing a series of applied, hands-on toolkits for artists and producing organizations who may want to engage in this kind of work as well. That way, we’re making sure that not only does our work have an impact in this project, but hopefully we’re planting the seeds for other artists and organizations to continue to elevate important stories through new media.”
This project produced such an innovative and creative way of storytelling that truly highlighted youth voices within the stories they chose to tell.
By: Alexandra Few