Dundee and Me - interactive piece

As part of the project 'Dundee and Me: How the City Shapes our Moods’ – a collaboration between University of Dundee and Abertay University – Primary 5 pupils from Blackness Primary in Dundee were invited to co-design and develop an interactive piece. The aim of this piece was to explore how young people perceive Dundee, and to reflect on the diverse emotions they experience day-to-day in and around the city. Pupils considered how urban and green spaces impacted on their wellbeing, both positively and negatively, and generated stories and artwork that represented these experiences.

Following initial workshops at Blackness Primary School, the pupils spent a morning at Abertay University. They were provided with structured practical activities and combined their existing artistic materials and stories with a series of new image work. They did all of this with game development pipelines in mind, and were encouraged to lead on how the end-piece should represent their collective contributions. The output of this process was a co-designed interactive piece, developed for Windows in Unity. All of the artwork and stories represented in the final piece were produced by the pupils.

The end piece provides insight into how Dundee is viewed and understood by this often-underrepresented group. At a time of rapid change in the city, underpinned by large-scale business and cultural projects, this piece shows how young people living in the inner-city experience Dundee, and what matters most to them. Pupils collect their experiences around the home, their school, parks, and commercial and religious spaces.