VR Kaleidoscope: reconfiguring space and place through community-based media literacy interventions

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the findings of VR Kaleidoscope, a community-based educational project involving young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in the creation of 360-degree films for Virtual Reality (VR). The project aimed to provide the participants with the tools to offer insights into their worlds, by enabling them to produce immersive films. The research around the project resulted in empirical evidence, through qualitative interviews and VR projects, of the potential impact of VR in Critical Media Literacy settings. This approach aims at encouraging ‘marginalised or misrepresented people' to tell stories that ‘express their concerns' (Kellner and Share [2007]. ‘Critical Media Literacy, Democracy, and the Reconstruction of Education’. In Media Literacy: A Reader, edited by D. Macedo, and S. R. Steinberg, 3-23. New York: Peter Lang Publishing). VR lends itself for thinking about, and representing, ‘space' and ‘place' in new ways, due to its immersive potential. The young people were provided with VR training in order to create their own 360-degree films responding to the theme ‘What does place mean to you?’. The project sheds light on the technological, relational and experiential aspects of VR practice and aspires to prompt media educators, filmmakers and community groups to collaborate using VR.

KEYWORDS:

• Virtual reality
• community
• space
• place
• pedagogy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Danai Mikelli http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9895-1490

Steve Dawkins http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6248-386X

Notes

1 We would like to acknowledge the various ways in which space and place have been interpreted to make sense of the world. One the one hand, humanistic accounts emphasise the relationship between the character of specific places and the cultural identities of those who occupy them (Hubbard 2005). On the other, Marxist and materialist approaches foreground space as socially produced and consumed. Our understanding of place/space is informed by feminist and Post-structural analyses relating space to the concept of difference and moving away from a fixed notion of identity.

2 Bignante used Photo Elicitation methods in the context of a research project on the Masaai and the use of natural resources. She observed that traditional interviews sometimes produced ‘vague replies, silence or embarrassing pauses’ (2010), thus magnifying the cultural and relational gap between researcher and participants, creating confusion or boredom, or causing them to lose their interest.

3 We are using Bourdieu’s (1986) notion of cultural capital: that is, the social assets of a person (education, intellect, knowledge, skill) that provide the opportunity for, or inhibit, social mobility.

4 According to the Child Poverty Action group, 45% of children in St Michael’s ward in Coventry were in poverty in October-December 2015, after housing costs (Coventry City Council 2016).

5 The anonymity of participants has been preserved by allocating fictional names to participants.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Coventry University.

Notes on contributors

Danai Mikelli

Danai Mikelli is a Lecturer in Media Production at Coventry University. She holds a PhD in Media and Communication from Coventry University and an MA in Documentary Practice from the University of Bristol. Her doctoral research explored the implications of introducing interactive documentary in a series of interventions with young people, proposing a Pedagogy of Difference 2.0. Her current research focuses on immersive media and literacy and she is co-creator with Steve Dawkins of the community-based project VR Kaleidoscope (2018) in partnership with Positive Youth Foundation.

Steve Dawkins

Steve Dawkins is the Associate Head of the School of Media and Performing Arts at Coventry University. His practice revolves around documentary/experimental documentary, both still and moving image, exploring senses of place and space. He is increasingly moving into more immersive forms of production and is the co-producer and director, with Sarah Jones, of Contemplations in Chungking (2016) and Shameful Conquest (2017).