Art Starts has recently partnered with Hand Eye Society, a Toronto not-for-profit changing the way people think about and interact with video games through a number of innovative initiatives, programs and pop-ups. We will be offering support and mentorship as HES shifts their focus to increased outreach, media literacy and community engagement beyond the downtown core by bringing their ‘play and make’ initiative, Game Curious, to the Glendower neighbourhood. “Art Starts has been doing arts-based community programming for many years, so we’re very fortunate to be able to learn from an organization with so much experience in an area to which we’re relatively new,” says Sagan Yee, Game Curious’ Program Coordinator, on this new, exciting connection.
Game Curious is about ‘exploring the untapped art of video games, for people who don’t necessarily identify as gamers.’ And from speaking with Sagan, it is clear increasing access to games and their potential for storytelling is a significant aspect of the program and she highlights cost of technology and the misconception of video games as being predominantly violent as some of the obstacles to engaging in the medium. According to her, “Game Curious aims to break down these barriers by providing a physical space in which people of different backgrounds can explore a wide variety of titles, ask questions, and eventually learn how to tell their own stories through games.”
Game Curious began last week at our Glendower location and Sagan describes the first session as “lively” with about 15 youth, some as young as 5 years old, coming out to discuss the program and play a variety of games, a couple of the most popular being Scott Pilgrim vs The World and Space Race. The theme for this session was ‘games made or set in Toronto’ and Sagan explains that this was chosen “to get participants thinking about how games can reflect their own environments.” Some of the participants were so intrigued they’ve already begun developing ideas for their own games, sketching characters and brainstorming level designs. It is this natural curiosity that HES seeks to harness and channel to ultimately “encourage more diversity, inclusion, and creativity in the community and industry,” says Sagan.
It has been such a fulfilling opportunity working with and mentoring such a ground-breaking organization like Hand Eye Society, the first video game arts organization in the world, and Art Starts looks forward to the uniquely personal worlds the Glendower youth will discover and create as they get Game Curious this spring.