Bridge + Tunnel Productions presents a new interactive media project: Wiki: Ali in Wonderland WiKi: Ali in Wonderland (An interactive film website): An on-line story about the journey to adulthood of two teenagers from the Middle-East who arrive in the North-East of England. But this is a coming of age story with a difference: the website and the film break new ground in that the script is improvised and developed with young people from similar backgrounds to the characters. WiKi is an innovative youth-led initiative media education project for recent young migrants (including asylum seekers and refugees), aged 14-25, living in the North-East of England. Over the course of eighteen months, Wiki will enable young people to work alongside film industry professionals to gain media skills while collaborating and working towards a real film production. This will be achieved through a series of weekly workshops focusing on drama and improvisation, camerawork, sound design, editing, and web-site development. On the website, Wiki: Ali in Wonderland, you will be able watch the stories of the main characters Ali & Nasrine emerge. What happens to them when they arrive, how do they deal with the difficulties that they face, and how do they learn to make their way in their new home? What conflicts are there in their family environment? And how do they make the transition from innocence to adulthood? The themes of the story will be familiar to the young people involved, many of whom have themselves made remarkable journeys. Their experiences will inform the development of the fictional elements of the film, bringing authenticity and vitality. The WiKi project will result in an interactive website hosting a new feature-film length script, which pushes the boundaries of storytelling (and how films are developed) and allows participants to freely draw upon real-life experiences to input into fictional characters and storyboards, encouraging young people to explore their own experiences of migration and settlement in a new culture. Within the framework of the film, the participants will develop a series of storylines and work collaboratively to create mini film sequences, characters, and dialogue based upon these ideas. These films will then be uploaded onto a WiKi website, which the group will design themselves adding additional elements, perhaps including animation, graphics, photographs, sound, music, and blogs. The WiKi website will come alive through these various elements much like an animated comic book! Through the WiKi site, the group will also be able to communicate with other young people across the country from similar backgrounds, who may themselves feel excluded within their own communities or isolated because of their experiences. This project is underpinned by the wiki philosophy (as in Wikipedia), allowing the participants the freedom to edit and add content, create new web pages for the site, link to other wesites and have editorial control over their own storyboards. This will be an evolving and exciting process for the online audience and a new method for creating a feature film! The WiKi website is just the first step in the process…. In Summer 2008, the WiKi script will be developed into a professional full-length online drama. The WiKi group may have the opportunity to star in the drama or be mentored behind the scenes working with the film crew. Once the film is made, we anticipate distributing it in schools, both as an education tool and as a further interactive project for more young people to get involved in. We are currently at the beginning of the project so Bridge + Tunnel Productions are currently seeking energetic, enthusiastic, creative and talented young people to join a new WiKi youth group. Watch out for launches and information coming soon! Don’t forget to join our mailing list if you want to keep updated!! Partners on the project include Sage Gateshead, North of England Refugee Service (NERS), Mongrel UK members, Newcastle University School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Tyne and Wear Archives and University of Sunderland Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies.