Children's Dreams of Future UK Treescapes Envisioned through Games

Story Research Group

Title: Children's Dreams of Future UK Treescapes Envisioned through Games.

Funded by: UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Future of UK Treescapes

Funding amount: £100k

Project duration: October 2023 – Jan 2025

Project partners: Dr Simon Carr (Project Lead), University of Cumbria; The Mersey Forest; University of Middlesex; Manchester Metropolitan University; X||dinary Stories

University of Plymouth staff:

Dr Dylan Yamada-Rice

More information: https://www.uktreescapes.org/fantastic-four

This project encourages children to envision the future of UK treescapes through both the co-design and development of an online game and ultimately through playing the output. To this end, the project has sought to engage children in the development of specific elements of producing a video game about treescapes to encourage young people more widely to engage critically with trees in their local environment – and not just rural but also urban trees.

Eleanor Dare

The research team have been working with children from two schools (one primary and one secondary) within The Mersey Forest area to bring children aged 8 to 13 years into the design of an online game where children can learn about some of the key principles of tree care and planting valued by the Mersey Forest.

Through a series of practical workshops with school children, we have co-created characters, a gaming narrative and environment using ideas about real and imagined treescapes. These have gone on to be used as the basis for a Roblox game. Roblox was chosen owing to the platform's popularity with children, meaning the game we created would likely reach a wider audience.

School children taking part in a treescapes workshop

The project bridges children's perceptions and the environmental impacts of changing treescapes, aiming to foster deeper connections between tree planting plans and practice, and children and young people.

Partnership with schools and The Mersey Forest ensures the project's relevance and impact at local and regional levels, but also offers potential to translate and scale up to a global level.

Illustration from project workshop

Child-participant information sheet

Geocache graphic narrative

The game will inform a new 25-year Mersey Forest Plan, offering channels for children's voices to be heard in the strategic development of a major community forest, and will be evaluated by DEFRA as a model for wider community engagement in planning woodland growth across the UK.

Dr Simon Carr, Project Lead

Eleanor Dare