Leading juvenile detainees to design a video game and create the music, sound effects, and artwork.

Techarts 2016: As an educator at Gamestart School in Ann Arbor, we took on a very unique responsibility: partnering with the Youth Arts Alliance (an organization bringing arts and education to children throughout southeast Michigan). We organized and operated an educational video game development course with four different youth detention centers from counties throughout the area. Our goal was to work with groups of detainee's to develop a video game for the sake of orientation and onboarding of future detainees (based on the current detainee's experiences and insights).

Using Gamestart School's computer resources we introduced the children to tools for creating music, sound effects, and graphics. We worked with the them to write short stories for the "orienation game", and then we put their work together using Unity game engine. The orientation games were installed at computer terminals in each detention center, and an unveiling ceremony was held in honor of the children who had been a part of the project.