BU Research Blog

On Wednesday this week (11 Nov 2020), I will be co-presenting the joint Bournemouth-Swansea University “You and CO₂” project at the Youth Climate Summit 2020 with Dr. Jennifer Rudd. The event is open to the public (registration required) at Transform Our World, entitled “No World 4 Tomorrow”, and will kick off at 3pm.

The presentation will largely be focused on a live reading of No World 4 Tomorrow, the project’s central text: an interactive digital narrative (a.k.a., Twine game, digital fiction, or hypertext fiction) that uses its story and interactivity to encourage secondary school students to take action to combat climate change. You and CO₂ incorporates this IDN into a series of workshops that have been implemented in several schools in Wales and England, as well as Technocamps, and will soon be implemented internationally.

You and CO₂ is part of my ongoing research project “IDNs for Health and Science Communication”, which aims to explore how interactive narrative can be implemented to educate audiences about key health and science topics through entertaining and engaging storygames. The project is interdisciplinary and collaborative, as I and other artists and communicators team up with health and science researchers to convey accurate, effective messages through story and play. It also incorporates practice-based research, as I examine the creative process of designing entertaining interactive narratives with the foundational purpose of educating and informing audiences on specific topics.

This work is supported by the Targeted Academic Research Scheme; Welsh Crucible; and Bournemouth’s Science, Health, and Data Communication Research Group. The full IDN of No World 4 Tomorrow is available for reading/playing on the You and CO₂ website.