Weeknotes on Accessibility
Everything has changed, but remains the same We are almost at the end of the Development Phase of the Community Tech Project. I’ve been absent from weeknotes with a lot of personal reasons, but here is an important one. Over the last few weeks while we have being testing iterations of our server, we have been testing for the following: Feasiblity User Friendliness Is it what is needed? Is it what is wanted? How will people use it? What is their own ‘discovery process’ – that is, when presented with it, what will they do? How will they interact and what choices will they make, how will the navigate – is it intuitive or confusing? Does it solve our problem statement? Houston, we have a problem (statement) This is the original problem statement. My solution was to build a safeguarded, supportive, nurturing Minecraft server for children to come and play safely and make friends. Following the prototyping and researching, the plan has changed a lot. It’s not just about building a server. It’s about making the server accessible. In any project I lead, I am always thinking, “but who am I leaving out?” In previous weeknotes I spoke about the adaptive controls for PC and eye trackers I have set up in workshops. But I have always been working on the basis that the members ALREADY play Minecraft on PC ( we don’t run on consoles due to our bespoke plugins for safeguarding and game play). And that they know the commands. So the prototyping we are doing now in the final push is all about accessibility. Minecraft involves a LOT of typing and keyboard use. Some players who want to be part of this supportive community find it difficult to join other Minecraft servers due to the fast past text chat, and need for typed commands and reading on screen instructions. The young people we work with are exclusively for children and young people with SEND. Many take longer processing verbal and text communication. Some are dyslexic, or at an earlier stage of literacy than peers. The remembering and typing of commands has proven to be a barrier for some. So Josh has designed bespoke menus for the functions that normally people would type. Some typed functions are replaced by NPCs (non-player characters) that you right click. The words are on contrasting colour squares. All can be accessed by clicking on an NPC or typing one of only TWO commands : /menu or /info We did an initial prototype workshops with willing guinea pigs, and the result was an easily navigated session, with none of the overwhelm before. Although it is just a wire frame protoype and there is a lot of work to do to make an Super Accessible Minecraft Group Gaming Experience, we are getting there. We know what the end goal is now – its not just building a server – that’s the “easy”* bit – its making this server graphically accessible so that no-one is left out. * Its not easy *tears hair out*
Weeknotes-End of Research Phase
The video is unrelated to the weeknotes, but I wanted to share one of my all time favourite performances of Wipeout by The Ventures, where Max Weinburg joined the legend that is Mel Taylor on drums and I’ve never seen such energy on stage. Amazing. PlayBack Week This week I presented the research findings to my peer group in the Discovery Challenge. You can see my presentation slides here. Having dedicated research time meant I slowed down a little rather than barging straight in trying things out without putting the thought in first, which I am prone to doing when I get overexcited. It wasn’t without its challenges. A youth group who were going to be a guinea pig, by providing research opportunities and then being our first youth group on the server didn’t get involved in the end, but luckily I organically found a disability youth group who were willing and enthusiastic and had already been thinking about how to make gaming more inclusive, but didn’t know where to start. The research with parents and children resulted in more members joining my existing tiny server, and the time involved in both research and the time demanded by running an expanding server was a lot more than anticipated and Minecraft has basically taken over my life now. In person research involved running Minecraft LAN Gaming Clubs every Saturday morning as part of a larger kids club, and it has been so popular, and the kids who come back week after week love it so much, that I can’t stop this now. Saturday Minecraft Club is a thing now, and its the best fun. Two unexpected things the research threw up that I’m embracing with open arms: The playback session was fantastic for bringing all my thoughts and plans together, and helping me see how far I’ve come already. Next it’s the development phase – time to build the best Minecraft server our players have ever seen. Im working with some amazing tech superstars, adaptive tech orgs, collaborators, and Minecrafters to make some magic happen. Excited! To finish here is The Ventures performing the same song about 20 years earlier. I love seeing how they’ve changed over the years, and how the music is timeless. Phenomenal energy! He is such an amazing drummer, and collaborating with another legendary drummer in the 1985 version above elevated this to god-tier version. So there you go. I can even relate The Ventures videos to this weeknotes now. Collaboration can elevate something awesome to stratospheric levels, so keep doing what you believe in, find like minded people and keep those connections open to see what magic happens.
WeekNotes Week ? : What Have I Gained from the Discovery Fund So Far?
The Mind Expanding World of the Discovery Fund – What I Have Gained from the Community Tech Project So Far What have I gained? Personally, a sense of purpose, drive, vision and clarity of what the project could accomplish in the short, medium and long term. What has actually being going on? Here we go… How it started When I started the discovery fund, I wanted to build a community Minecraft server from scratch on a machine in my home to avoid eye watering monthly charges (electricity bill has entered the chat) I was optimistic, excited, and hopelessly naive. I thought we would set up a Minecraft server and then have loads of kids playing together safely and that would be that forever. I thought it would be easy! Right…….! What has actually being going on? Here we go… How it started When I started the discovery fund, I wanted to build a community Minecraft server from scratch on a machine in my home to avoid eye watering monthly charges (electricity bill has entered the chat) I was optimistic, excited, and hopelessly naive. I thought we would set up a Minecraft server and then have loads of kids playing together safely and that would be that forever. I thought it would be easy! Right…….! How it’s going I am EXHAUSTED. My brain hurts. I have learned so much and realised I don’t know anything and have SO MUCH MORE to learn. I’m scared that I can’t support the kids who are so invested and the parents who are tired too and want to the best for their kids. I feel like I’m going round in circles mapping and configuring, installing different bits of adaptive tech and nothing works! Until it does. Its so complicated. But! I’m happy that I’m trying, and the kind words and emails I have had from parents and organisations who are invested and tell me how much this is needed – and that I’m doing a great job – gives me the energy and resilience to continue. Their support for me and the project reminds me how worthwhile it all is and that I am the right person to do this, even when imposter syndrome rears its head again! What’s Going On Then? When I started the discovery fund, I wanted to build a community minecaft server from scratch on a machine in my home to avoid eye watering monthly charges (electricity bill has entered the chat) The extensive weekly research conversations and email exchanges with parents, gaming companies, other Minecraft server owners, and SEND youth groups who have grabbed hold of this idea with both hands and gone “Yes!..AND…” has blown my mind and taken over my life I’ve gained a network of invested stakeholders and end users who are fully involved and a purpose in my life that has taken my life over completely for the duration of this project. The ‘need’ of this project is more than just a Minecraft server. I spend a hours a week on pastoral care issues – I need a Mentor on staff, there is a need for qualified staff to support and a need that parents and players have voiced for this. There are children who can’t use a keyboard/have mobility needs who would love to play at the youth groups I am working with. This lead me down the wormhole of adaptive tech, and invested in budget eye tracking software, the Tobii 5, with open source software called EyeMine from Special Effect Charity. Along with trackball mice, adaptive buttons and switches, to allow every body to play in the worlds we are creating, and in the worlds we already using now. Youth groups I am talking to have asked me to go in and get this up for them in their computer room and let them know what is compatible for their needs, as they don’t have anyone who knows about this stuff. So what does it all mean for the project? It is a project that is still about creating an inclusive minecraft server, but I have learned this involves: Would love to hear thoughts, comments, experiences and talk to people about this if you’re interested! Do get in touch or leave a message.
Weeknotes – the Mega Edition Part 1.
These weeknotes are spanning THREE weeks not one, as the last couple of weeks ran away with me – lots of practical work and sessions with kids and parents for MineMania, general day to day Creative Active Lives work, decorators in and single parenting. The first part of this weeknotes will be about the tech side of setting up our Minecraft Server. In the second part, I am going to talk about a strand of this project that I wasn’t anticipating, that has become increasingly more important and the need is evident and asked for: real world support to access Minecraft (AND other online gaming) – the real world support takes the form of mental health support and adaptive tech for people with physical requirements to access gaming – Weeknotes Part 2 will follow in a separate post. What has been interesting as well is that the original aim of the project was to support SEND youth groups to access their own Minecraft worlds. I haven’t had the interest or engagement from SEND youth groups, and I can understand why- they are just so busy with so much to organise and so many famililes to support. But I have had more interest than I ever expected from individual families who have need for more than just somewhere to play games, and this is really informing how we are designing the server and its wider support. Tech Stuff I’m going to start the weeknotes with a team photo! Meet our tech team, Smudyy, ri4N, bomxacalaka and Reddust9. They spent a week setting the backend of the server up and coding bespoke systems. It needed a lot of planning first – to decide on the structure of the server, what each element would be used for, deciding on RAM allocation, and how all the different elements would ‘talk’ to each other. We had a meeting that ended up being TWO HOURS long before we called it a day and we still had more to talk about! Not having a tech background and only playing Minecraft, not understanding the coding in the background, I didn’t realise just how much was involved and how complex this would be. The team did an amazing job in setting it up, and communicating to me how it worked and what they were doing in a way I could understand. Check out our structure and RAM allocation – we have managed to keep it just within our limit of 64GB! Amazing 😀 Thanks r14n for getting this set up! ROXY: 1GBKERB: 256MBHUB: 4GBSMP: 10GBECONOMY: 4GBWORLD OF CALM: 3GBCREATIVE: 3GBREDSTONE: 5GBMINIGAME 1: 4GBMINIGAME 2: 4GBMINIGAME 3: 4GBPRIVATE SMP 1: 4GBPRIVATE SMP 2: 4GB To make it easier for kids to play mini games, we decided on a queueing system so kids could select to play, and then go and do something else while waiting for other players to join, and once the minimum number reached they would all auto join. Smuddy designed a bespoke communication system called Kerb – an event distributor server software – you can check it out on Github Reddust9 designed a bespoke chat logging software called CLog, you can see it on Github here We have allocated roles, with Smuddyy coding, and on mini-games, r14N developing the Hub, and bomxacalaca designing a Redstone world for tutorials and builds. We will be using a plugin called Plot Squared for our Redstone world, to allow players claimable protected plots with infinite redstone resources to work with. r14N was working on ideas for the Hub after we brainstormed design themes – the main theme was colourful, we love cats, quirky, slightly bonkers. Here is r14N’s update: I created the initial setup for the HUB, installing all the necessary plugins required for the HUB to run ready for building to take place next week. I created an initial design for the HUB layout which is to be discussed with the rest of the team. I also generated some images using Dall-E AI that can give us ideas on what the HUB should look like based on my design and the features discussed. Smuddyy also created a Discord Bot which fulfils an important safeguarding function. We have set up a Discord server that parents will be invited to. The Discord Bot pulls in information from our Minecraft Server – a message appears in the Discord to let you know what players have joined or left each server (with their player head displayed!), and also any in-game chat messages are displayed in the Discord server in real time. So parents can always see who is there and whats being said at any time. And work is starting on the GUI – after looking after a few design options, a clear table themed to our brand will be accessible and easy to navigate even for our newest to Minecraft members. A rough sketch of it’s components: Lovely things that have come up during this research phase and weekly workshops: Challenges! We need a fixed IP address to run the server reliably, so I have ordered a new broadband package which includes this – installed Thursday. This means we will have to do some work on the old and new server to get it all running, its a massive faff but I’m grateful to have my amazing daughter Reddust9 who is dealing with all of this making it all work again. Couldn’t do this project without her! Setting up adaptive tech. God it’s a nightmare. Its SO confusing. There are so many different types with different compatibilities. Settings and cables and an overwhelm of options! It’s all so expensive as well. Would love any comments on what we are doing or suggestions, please feel free to start or join a conversation below!
I don’t like my children having screen time playing games. What’s so special about Minecraft anyway?
I’m in the first session of our Open Working meet ups. We’ve been set a task to write a post in a timed slot during the session: Write Your Weeknote in 30 Minutes! Here it is. Its something I have been reflecting on the past couple of weeks, as I have been asked about it and talked about it A LOT with parents in Minecraft clubs, workshops and interviews. 5 mins outline 20 mins expand into paragraphs 5 mins wrap up and publish Lets go.I love a deadline to sweep away all procrastination! Outline: Expand Screen time can be games, TV, phone, tablet, computer – I know I spend far too much time in front of various screens and I know when I’ve over done it and I get a headache, and my eyes get tired. My daughter definitely has too much screen time. It’s hard to impose limits as a parent – she’s on the autistic spectrum, and her friends are online, her special interests are coding, which she’s a whizz at, and she has made some amazing achievements – her screen time is educational and her life passion – it’s really hard to take it away from her as its means so much – and its emotional support as well in many ways. But every parent has to make their own call for their own set of circumstances. Minecraft has been a huge part of our lives for years, and has led to a lot of her achievements, sparked a lot of projects, and been the source of her longest and best friendships and support networks. Its a unique game – we choose Minecraft for our LAN gaming sessions over other options such as Among Us or Fortnite because of it’s unique set of benefits and the opportunities it can offer players. Its a sandbox game – play in Minecraft can take the form of whatever the player is interested in and wants to do – we go on flower hunts, bug hunts, create gardens or farms, build machines with electricity, hunt, go on exploring expeditions, or fight each other! Children work together – they make friends, fall out, make up – for children who aren’t in school or are socially isolated it can be a lifeline. We can use principles of Lego Therapy to engage and work with groups and individuals. In Minecraft, without realising they are learning, children can learn about maths, geology, architecture, botany, wildlife, agriculture, electronic circuit, write books, team work and leadership skills, design and technology and coding. I have led in person sessions with children who have never used a laptop before! And they learned keyboard skills, practiced their alphabet and numbers, having to use the letters and numbers on the keyboard, and were soon playing as if they used a laptop for years. In advanced Minecraft you can learn coding languages such as Python, Java, C++, and learn really complicated stuff that I don’t understand (luckily my team do – you can see examples of their work here: https://github.com/MineManiaUK) Minecraft makes STEM fields accessible and relevant to all ages irrelevant of gender, abilities, additional needs – our project aims to provide a safe place for children and young people with SEND to access all these opportunities if they want to – or just play and have fun with others. There are wider benefits that happen alongside the learning and the fun though. And this is the really magical bit for me. I have seen time and time again over the years doing Minecraft club, the children growing in leaps and bounds in self confidence and self esteem. Children laughing and talking with friends on the computer – who normally don’t laugh a lot, and not with friends. Children who are shy, and not wanting to talk, opening up. Children who don’t want to leave the house or their bedroom, up at the crack of dawn, getting ready to come out to in person Minecraft Club, and staying there happy and engaged talking to and playing with other children – yes at screens! But next to each other, helping each other, and having the best time. Good screen time 🙂 Minecraft is awesome.
Thoughts on Open Working
The weeknotes are an important part of the open working element of this project, as well as a means of organising my own thoughts and finding some clarity, as the overwhelm is REAL, believe me! Its been several weeks now, and I don’t feel like I’ve really done anything. I have ticked off what I’ve done in our weekly checklists. I KNOW that I have done LOADS of reading, thinking, talking, interviewing. But it feels like wading through jelly. I think any project like this goes in stages, from excitement, to confidence, to wobbles, to existential dread, then back up to slight optimism again. Right? Beuller? Beuller? This week we have a couple more elements to add to our open working arsenal. We have started a YouTube channel, where we will stream some online and in-person Minecraft LAN Clubs, we will upload development and testing on our new server. One of our developer team members Smuudge has created a GitHub Profile where we will upload the code that the team create for anyone else to use in the future, it is all open source. We had the first development team meeting this week to talk about roles, realistic goals and how to translate the findings of research into reality. DISCUSSION: Ubuntu vs Windows = I would prefer Windows, not being a techie, and peri-menopause makes learning new things more difficult now! – but to create an efficient server that can function as I envisage it, we need to use software called Pterodactyl which is free, open-source game server management panel. This needs Ubuntu. Not Windows. It’s ok. I can do this. I’m grateful to the grant allowing breathing space for all the learning I need to do! We are going to use the main machine to run the server, with a virtual machine for back up. We considered using mod packs for different gaming experiences, but after looking into it together, installation isn’t always as accessible for people not used to computers, so we are putting that on hold for now. Purpur not paper. That is honestly not a typo. We had a whole conversation mostly made up of words I didn’t know, that were random jumbles of letters shoved together, but it all boiled down to Purper not Paper. This means that we are using the server software Purpur. Purpur is based on the server software called Paper, which is itself based on Bukkit. So Purpur seems like it will be the best for our purposes. Thanks to Josh’s excellent diagram it does all make sense now – see below. This is our plan for the prototype The green bits in the above plan are what we are aiming to have – not completely finished, but set up enough to check our coding and safeguarding – by w/c 11th December. Fingers crossed, as would love to have screenshots or screenshare to share at the Playback sessions. The amber bits we will work on Jan- Mar 2023, and the red sections are for if we have time in Jan – Mar 2024. The above plan is a working doc on Excalidraw – again, cheers Josh for the heads up on that, it’s really useful. So we are adding, changing it as we come up with new ideas or challenges. With this initial phase of development, we are happy to allow ourselves to test and to fail, to find out what works and makes the best use of our resources, and also future proofs our server as much as possible. I’d better go and get learning all about Ubuntu…
Week 6
I missed Weeknotes last week. I set myself the challenge of writing a post every week, for accountability, to measure my own progress, and to help keep my ADHD brain engaged, on track, not skipping or going off on (too many) tangents, and so that when I felt unproductive, and low, I can look back on these and see all that has been achieved by the team and by me so far. Here’s a recap! Bullet points of milestones achieved this and last 2-3 weeks: This is my problem statement: Our problem is that children with SEND/neurodiversities are often already isolated, are prevented from gaming online due to parental safeguarding concerns, adverse experiences while gaming online around bullying, accessing, or safeguarding that stops them gaming. Then, they withdraw from gaming with other children online. This means that they don’t get to form friendships with like minded children, access peer support, and get mental health benefits that come from developing friendship networks. My research has been interesting, I have conducted Zoom interviews, but the most interesting and valuable research took place at Minecraft sessions for children with send i have been doing on Wednesday and Satursdays. The children played, and I spoke to parents then and we got hands on with how it works and is safeguarded. Some were new to online gaming, some parents have not allowed it before for safety, some were youth group leaders who wanted to set up a private online community and came with their own kids to see how it worked and talk to me about it. I have to confess – doing this as our research was not intentional – I set up the inperson clubs because I knew there was a need from emails and messages I have had and I wanted to do it for the kids – all the time thinking I had better get a move on with my research. But I realised that organically this was exactly the research I needed to do. I have had SO MANY conversations with parents and group leaders during these sessions, and they are continuing every week until Xmas initially. I’ve discussed safeguarding and their concerns, how and where their children have played online and what issues they’ve encountered, what their children get from online gaming, what the benefits and concerns are, and shown parents how to play, what Minecraft is all about, and provided demonstrations of different adaptive controllers. It has been really interesting that the biggest need that has come out so far from the research, is the need for mental health support through counselling/mentoring in the game world where the children feel safe and that they can be themselves.
Weekend Extra
I wanted to make in person gaming and Minecraft clubs at my HAF holiday camps more accessible, so thanks to funding from Sandwell MBC and Go Play Sandwell, earlier this year Iinvested in 4 x Smoothie buttons, a Quester Joystick and Switchbox from Pretorian Technologies.They mentioned on the phone back then about eye tracking software, but I couldn’t afford it, and assumed it would be eye wateringly expensive, so put to the back of my mind as something to work towards if we had a good summer commercially! I didn’t think about it for a few months, until speaking with a local Community group last week about this project, who asked me how children who couldn’t use a keyboard could play. I told them about the kit I had, but that for this project, its something that the children would need to have at home, or at your venues, to be able to access. It got me thinking again, about what I could do to increase access and help individuals and groups who don’t have this tech, aren’t aware of it, and put off by the choice, tech specs and set up. I then entered an extremely rewarding internet wormhole as I typed a million different queries into Google to find out what kind of eye tracking software exists, how much it costs, how it used. I gulped at the first I saw, costing £1495, PC Eye by Tobii I spent a lot of time internetting and looking at the entire Tobii range. I do find it all confusing and my brain was melting. There is a range of more afffordable Tobii products, the Gaming Eyetracker and Headtracking range, with the latest model the Tobii 5 coming in at a much more manageable £237 with 15% off this weekend on top of that. But it looked like it was just for gamers, to support flight sims, racing games, not for assisted gaming. Unfortunately PC Eye was the one. Much more internetting later, I came across Special Effect UK, an incredible charity specialising in helping physically disabled people, specifically children, play video games. In a case of not all heroes wear capes, they’ve created EyeMine, FREE software to download specifically to enable players to play minecraft just by looking at the screen. And in wonderful news, it works with affordable eye tracking hardware. They’ve even provided a list of what hardware it’s compatible with. So, I’ve purchased the Tobii 5 and can’t wait for it to arrive. Do take a look at the Special Effect UK website. Their work is incredible and changes so many lives, and is free of charge. If any families are interested in trying our the Eye Tracking software and Eye Mine, or the buttons and joystick, contact me to arrange a try out session so you can see if it works for your child before investing in any expensive hardware!
Weeknotes Week 4
We have a new logo and mascot! We have got to name him though. He will be popping up everywhere now, including on leaflets signposting further support for children, and a picture book, and social stories. Thank you Sam of Defaced Designs for creating this awesome font, logo variations and character! Im going to post the design drafts below, it was brilliant seeing it all take shape. Parents have told me, and I know from experience, that it really means something to the kids to be a part of the group, be on the team, feel a sense of belonging, so I wanted a playful, mischievous character and logo that they would LOVE to have on their T-shirts, plushie, stickers, in a story – we will be providing these for free for our founder members and as tournament and event giveaways. He will also be the MineMania helper character in our literature and website. This week saw the return of our Weekly Minecraft social for kids with SEND. I’ve inducted three new members this week, using our new membership and safeguarding procedure, and induction meeting. On a safeguarding theme, I’ve also done the NSPCC Training Course on Managing Safer Online Communities as part of the project study work. I’ve hosted Minecraft clubs for several years now, but the course really drills down into what you must consider and have in place to keep your members safe. My safeguarding procedure and policies are rigorous, and I am Level 2 and Designated Safeguarding Lead trained, but I still have a checklist of things I need to put in place now following this course before the second stage of the project kicks off. This week we achieved one of our project milestones early! Thank you reddust9! We (NOT me I hasten to add) have coded a bespoke plug in to manage world access to our server. We have a back end database where all our players information is stored. This is connected to our Minecraft Server. We have all this connected to an easy to use browser based interface, where we can add players details, and toggle on and off access for all of the worlds in our server. This means that we can control what world a player lands in, and where they can access from there. So for our virtual youth clubs that we set up for SEND youth groups, their members will only ever be in their private world, unless they choose to allow access to mini games or community SMP for example. This is an excellent way of safeguarding our community group members so that have full control over where their young people go. And so easy to use being browser based, with just add text fields and toggle on and off buttons. Nice work Reddust9. Community Consultation I’ve also spoken with a local community group supporting young people with SEND and their families this week. Safeguarding was their primary concern, and I was glad that I have spent so many weeks working on it before trying to do anything else, as it the most important thing for all of us, and a huge concern as a parent or group leader. It was also the first time trying to explain just WHY this is so important to some of the kids and how it can be an emotional support, a safe space, and even change lives. They may or may not decide to join me on this project, but it was a really informative experience hearing what their concerns and questions were. Challenges this week I have interviewed a lot of candidates for a role building and developing this server. I offered 4 candidates a position, and asked for an answer by the end of this week. Unfortunately I have not had an any acceptances yet. Maybe I scared them off! I am starting to think of an Plan B. Also. Finding a counsellor who can work with children within a gaming environment. This is very niche and proving a challenge. I advertised on Indeed for qualified and experienced counsellors and was deluged with responses, unfortunately barely any have the required experience. The upside of all these interviews, is that although time consuming, having to keep explaining over and over again is refining my plan and my ‘pitch’. Every time I explain I use fewer and fewer words! Fun things this week Minecraft Club is back! It is brilliant to be back with the kids listening to their adventures and plans and teleporting everyone everywhere for adventuring. One of my long time colleagues, Terry who has worked with me at Creative Active Lives and Spinsonic Entertainment for years, is also a qualified mentor with years of experience. In fact this is how we met years ago! While looking for mentors and counsellors, I was talking to Terry about it and suddenly a lightbulb went off. You are right there in front of me! I asked Terry if he played Minecraft, as he has never once mentioned it. A little he said, on XBox, with his kids, but not much. 48 hours later and he was up till midnight playing it on the computer. I am thrilled that Terry will be joining us as a sessional leader after training, and as a youth mentor later on in the project. Design Process
Week Notes Week 3
This week, I have been reflecting a lot on WHY I’m undertaking this project. The Community Tech Discovery Fund programme ‘officially!’ started this week. I began the reading from our first email from CAST. One part of it, was five questions to reflect on for our next meeting. One part stuck with me. Understand the problem first. Then keep asking yourself WHY and get deep into it. It was in the back of my mind constantly, and when I was interviewing for technical experts for server development, and explaining the project over and over from scratch, it really helped me open it up. The project is – make a community minecraft server for children and young people with SEND and neurodiversities. The problem is- There is a shortage of safe, inclusive, supportive spaces online where vulnerable young people can play safely and independently, but supported and safeguarded. Why – A lot of the young people I know and who attend my sessions don’t have a lot or any friends to play online with. Why – Their mental health has suffered and an outlet like Minecraft helps a LOT. And more so when played with friends. Parents sometimes can’t get through the technical aspects of setting up the game and making sure its safe online. Parents just don’t want their vulnerable children playing online for safety reasons. Children who might be closed to counselling and mentorship, find themselves building trust and relationships in Minecraft, and being open to support in this space. Their enthusiasm and skills in the game around coding, circuits, architecture, design, engineering, team work and leadership are honed and are transferable skills, which might not get chance to shine in other environments, but Minecraft can open to the door to so many new experiences and opportunities. But this isn’t only applicable to Minecraft, in my workshop company I have seen my Digital Music Production, circus skills, and hula hooping workshops all be that thing that resonates with some individuals, become transformational and change their lives for the better. Having spoken with a few parents of children who are Minemania members this week, there is a need not just for the game playing itself but further support around counselling in the Minecraft environment, and a sense of belonging for the members. Next Steps Consult with specialised youth counsellors, SEND youth groups and parents. First interview with a youth counsellor is tomorrow. Consider for staff training: Lego Therapy, which lends itself well to the Minecraft environment, and Minecraft for Educators On the ‘for next year’ board – look at what other games our member youth and community groups service users want or do play online and can we support them to facilitate these games in their safeguarded area
