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Creative Futures

People think trans kids have no future. But by immersing us in their VR art, we see that another world is possible.

Creative Futures brings together three transgender youth to design their futures using Google’s Tilt Brush, a virtual reality painting application. The short, linear film follows the youth’s process of trying virtual reality art for the first time and creating 3D paintings of their visions for the future based on their current life challenges as trans youth. The immersive film transports viewers inside the imaginations of each youth artist as they give a 360° tour of their virtual reality art and share their stories.

  • Scout Windsor
    Director
  • Dylan Paré
    Director
  • Edyn Craig
    Key Cast
  • Levin Ifko
    Key Cast
  • Terrance Neil
    Key Cast
  • Sophia Marlow
    Music
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short, Virtual Reality
  • Runtime:
    10 minutes 15 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Scout Windsor, Dylan Paré

About Scout Windsor
Scout is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist whose work focuses on character and creature design. Her current focus on digital sculpting is informed by previous work in costume construction, traditional clay sculpting, and resin casting. Scout’s designs are influenced by a fascination with speculative fiction, talking animals, and surreal worlds. Her previous clients include Oculus, Microsoft, and Masterpiece VR. View her work at www.scoutwindsor.com.

About Dylan Paré
Dylan is a PhD Student in the Learning Sciences at the University of Calgary Werklund School of Education. They research and design for public science engagement with a primary focus on gender and sexuality, using the affordances of new technologies to enable individual meaning-making and socioscientific exploration. View Dylan’s work at www.dylanpare.com.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Foremost, we wanted to create media that spoke to pressing issues in our community and we were excited about the potential of virtual reality (VR) to change the way we tell and experience stories. Bringing together new VR storytelling capabilities with new narratives about trans youth made by trans youth was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.

When we came up with the concept for this film, we wanted to change the mainstream media narrative about transgender youth, which depicts the harsh realities of a world that excludes those who do not fit gender norms. By working with trans youth to design creative representations of their ideal futures in VR, these youth show us that another world is possible.

VR creative tools can open up storytelling to new creators, such as the youth in our documentary who had never used VR before. We were blown away by the impactful stories and art that the youth created in just one weekend. We hope audiences will be inspired by the youth’s stories and will want to support trans youth to tell their own stories and make positive changes in the world.

Our documentary captures the youth designing their worlds and voicing their visions, and combines shots of real life and virtual environments to blend the boundaries in between. The project also has a complimentary 360º immersive story (link is available at the end of the documentary) that transports viewers inside the virtual art to experience the youth's visions for their futures.