X|Media|Lab Perth grants its first ever development award
Three projects have won the development awards at the inaugural X|Media|Lab Perth, receiving up to $20,000 each.
The projects include a palaeo-detective game exploring the last moments of the Australian megafauna, an online documentary set in an inner-Perth community garden, and a graphic novel starring a street-wise Aboriginal girl.
Sixteen selected project teams had the opportunity to workshop their ideas with the BBC’s digital media expert Rosie Allimonos, mobile media guru Emma Kaye and global entertainment specialist Peter Shiao. Project teams needed to include at least one Western Australian media practitioner and a Western Australian artists/arts organisation to be eligible for the development awards – funded by ScreenWest and the Department of Culture and the Arts.
The winners are:
- The Western Australian Museum’s Bone Diggers project, which promises to combine serious game concepts with scientific research, documentary video content and stunning fossils to recreate a lost prehistoric world.
Designed for upper primary and high school students and interested adults, the project will develop a game, broadcast materials and an online experience to investigate the last moments in the life of the Australian Megafauna. - Robert McGlynn of CROW Media for his documentary Harvest, which is in development for online broadcast on SBS Food. Set in the Bentley Community Garden in the heart of a public housing precinct in inner-
Perth, the documentary will explore the personal, cultural and spiritual connotations of the fresh produce each family cultivates in the garden. - Broome artist Brenton E McKenna’s graphic novel, Ubby’s Underdogs: The Legend of the Phoenix Dragon, billed as Australia’s first Aboriginal graphic novel. Starring Ubby, a smart, street-wise Aboriginal girl, and a small rag-tag gang known as the ‘Underdogs’, the novel is the first of a planned trilogy and McKenna and publishers Magabala Books are looking to develop a phased digital media strategy around the characters and their world.
