As the Unicorn Theatre busily enters into 2025 with numerous projects incorporating considered expertise of young collaborators – our Creative Associates – we also reflect on a fantastic 2024, spent with the ASPbelong Co-Development group.

Over twenty Saturdays, and three international cultural exchanges, this group of ten young people, aged 12-13, built their skills as thinkers, designers and game makers, often mastering the art of gamifying complex ideas with the help of facilitators – Tatenda Matsvai and Ibrahim Farouk Sesay.

Saturday sessions saw the group grapple with storytelling for gameplay, getting insights into the process from ASPbelong’s design leads, Adam Barnard and Gloria Mittman. The group explored and refined the world of Lina – building an interactive museum of her belongings, designing puzzle games where we get to find out more about her family, and creating visually complex zines around the emotional peaks of the story. From this point, they leapt into world building on the rest of the story, capping off sessions with a three day intensive in August, to explore new ideas around a space travel game (and not before their own Star Trek-like field trip).

It was a terrific year, full of questions and bold creative leaps from these young artists.