Enchantment in the method for co-creation with children and young people by Eloise Bella Day (Effervescent)

After the pandemic lockdown, health professionals argued that future health emergency and social-purpose advertising campaigns should be created for children and young people as a specific audience. Moreover, they argued such campaigns should be co-created with children and teens to better reach, engage, and protect young people and their communities.

There are very few published methods for co-creating advertising campaigns with youngsters. Where processes have been described, they are often reliant on ‘head-based’ thinking skills such as remembering, stating opinions, documenting, thought-showers, and writing things on sticky notes. This means we miss out on ways of knowing with the body and with emotions: the hidden knowledges that reside consciously and unconsciously within groups of people with shared or similar experiences.

When adults ask young people to write or tell us things, we miss other ways that knowledge can be surfaced – through physicality, emotions, collaborative play, imagination, and art, for example.

In this talk, Bella will outline some of the ‘field devices’ she’s developed to help children and young people co-create adverts based on their lived experiences. She will discuss the multiple layers of ‘enchantment’ used in her workshops: the ‘otherworldy’ bubble created away from the outside world, the ‘wilful suspension of disbelief’ used in prototyping, and the group formation processes that allow young people to be enchanted by each other’s courage and strength when they can’t acknowledge their own.