YZUPwhānau: Animated Whānau Led Edutainment

Project 2020-11-11 20:19:24 +1300

YZUPwhānau edutainment

YZUPWhanau animated Edutainment is created by Tuhi Tuhi Communications a whanau led business, founded in 1989. Created by youth work thinker, designer and public health promotion expert Sjimmy Fransen and researcher, writer Dr Virginia Tamanui, by and through a process of creative youth/community wananga (workshops). During the COVID-19 we created a YZUP Whanau Stay Home campaign in ONE week and was amazingly successful with over 40'000 views with very limited budget. It was our whanau koha & contribution to the public health crisis. Now we want to build on that collaboration to create animations guided by the life stories of youth participants and our communities. Our methodology is to powerfully engage designers, media industry people, youth workers and youth who help shape community relevant material which is then community tested and produced.

Areas of focus: combating miss-information on social media, whanau/aiga working together creatively to buy a home, tolerance of difference dealing with indifference, combating and dealing with racism (in your face & structural), understanding how start a business and why, understanding Te Tiriti o Waitangi in today’s Aotearoa: why and how is it relevant, understanding structural inequity and how does this effect your health & well-being. Cultural identity, being mixed: Thai/Maori, Dutch/Creole/Maori, Chinese/Samoa/Maori/Euro, Fiji Indian/Pakeha, Rarotonga/Tongan....what’s our experiences? Public health promotion.

The characters our wananga (workshops) have already created are; Lolo (Surfer Girl), Daz (Air walker), Inemaru (Waka Ama), Raks (Mau Rakau  King), Lance (Floor Master), Salote (Nesian Queen) and DJ (Wheels of steel), and are based on real peoples experiences and stories.

The aim of YZUP is to build community and youth focused animated campaigns that are: timely (i.e. 1-2 weeks to produce), culturally relevant and respectful of the unique histories and experiences of our audiences and the stories told. Each episode will focus on a current issue that is affecting our extended whanau networks or communities that we are a part of. The timeframes are tight as the response must by relevant and timelly and boosted through social media platforms. The content is created and tested with rigour for accuracy and messaging factuality. We have language resource people cultural experts on-hand to support the content. We aim to produce 8 episodes the first one will be featured at a virtual launch. YZUP and its process can also morphe into other campaigns supporting advertising agencies and government projects.

The YZUP team is: Sjimmy Fransen (Creative Director & Public health), Dr Virginia Tamanui (writer and research), Joe Faaga (Animation, Graphics, producer), Stan Tallon (Graphics), George Taulealea (Advertising, multi media and Voices), Apenti Tamanui-Fransen (Te Reo support), Moeawa Tamanui-Fransen (Youth work and health promotion), Sjimmy-Zev Tamanui-Fransen (Waka stories).

This campaign covers episodes one - three, the funds raised are for production (animation/writing/voices/translations), promotion and for participant capasity building. We will re-engage with our Pledge-me community for campaign #2.

YZUPWhanau@Facebook

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