How can we support children and young people to develop emotional literacy through narrative design and play?
Moody Monsters is a project directed by myself and Riya Mahajan, that’s all about the ways in which children and young people experience and conceptualise emotions.
We developed a series of co-design workshops, an interactive experience, and an immersive exhibition – now being exhibited at FRAMELESS in London.
Workshops
We developed a co-design workshop framework where young participants are supported to make their own characters based on emotions, and taught to 3D scan their creations with Polycam.
We initially ran a test workshop with our RCA peers before running the session with young people. Running the session with adults is always going to be different to running it with children, but it was a good way for us to quickly test and iterate on the content of the workshop.
In June 2024, we hosted our first workshop for young people with a group of 9 students from Kensington Aldridge Academy – a school local to the RCA White City campus. They joined us at the RCA for a 2 hour workshop, and they each made contributions to the project through their characters and ideas for how the world should be designed.
Each character was then scanned in our 3D scanning booth, to be placed in what we’re calling a ‘digital sculpture garden’. This is a surreal space, inhabited by the monsters made by our young participants.
Activity Booklet
One of my favourite parts about the project was the activity booklet we made to accompany the session – where young participants could respond to questions like, ‘What is your monster good at?’, ‘What does your monster need help with?’, and ‘What world do you imagine your monster would live in?’ We had some really lovely, earnest responses.
We found that children and young people, especially when navigating big life transitions like changing schools, often need help with navigating friendships and interacting with others.
World Building
The environment for the monsters was also made out of 3D-scanned play-doh, modelled on top of the shape of a heart. The inspiration for this came from reading Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart – a book that gives us language for 87 different types of human emotions. In our current version of the project, you never really see the world from an aerial view, but it gave us a fantastic terrain to scan and use as a base for the world.
In our workshop, we were able to test our in-progress environment with the young participants, and asked them for their ideas on how we could build on this world. They wanted to see lots of plants, more ‘portals’, more cool stuff in the sky, and gave us ideas on where to place their monsters based on the emotions that their characters were embodying. These were all great ideas which informed the art direction and spatial design of the world.
Interactive Experience
The first outcome of the project that we developed was a prototype for an interactive experience built in Unreal Engine. Using a gamepad, one could navigate the environment and interact with different characters. When approached, each character would share the background stories that the participants had written for them.
Immersive Exhibit
As we were developing the project, an opportunity emerged to exhibit at FRAMELESS as part of the Imagined Realities residency in their Blank Canvas gallery.
FRAMELESS is the largest permanent multi-sensory experience in the UK, based in London’s Marble Arch. The space presented incredible opportunities which required entirely re-thinking the way audiences would experience the world.
The huge canvas at FRAMELESS allows visitors to stand directly inside the world of Moody Monsters and see the creations at larger-than-life size.
We were also able to work with Lian Dyogi, our composer and sound designer, to develop an incredible soundtrack that brings a whole new dimension to the experience.
We think the impact of this project is that it gives children and young people a space to express themselves through the arts, and centres them as contributors and creators in an acclaimed arts setting. For audiences, I think that it can be a lovely way for younger visitors to connect to work made by other children and young people – as well as to help adults see the world through the mind of a child.
Moody Monsters launched at FRAMELESS as part of Imagined Realities in October 2024 and will be open to the public until March 2025.
Tickets available here.
Made at the Royal College of Art, 2024 by Ruby Bell and Riya Mahajan
Monsters by Abdurahman, Aisha, Alyssa, Daliya, Kiara, Raqeia, Rufta, Salmaan, Yahya
Music composition and Sound Design by Lian Dyogi
With thanks to Kensington Aldridge Academy and QPR Community Trust
Shortlisted for the Helen Hamlyn Design Awards 2024
Official Selection, Spatial Storytelling at Breeze Film Festival 2024