[tsl] Henry Jenkins and the Hogwarts Dance Party of Good and Evil
Henry, as Dumbledore, speaks with GK's Barry Joseph
This past weekend we were able to bring back to TSL one of our favorite people here at GK, Henry Jenkins. Two years ago Henry outlined 11 skills, what he called New Media Literacies, that he thought would be essential for teens in the 21st century, and Global Kids has since then been thinking about and framing our work in terms of the skills and challenges to their acquisition that he talked about.
We've also thought that it would be fun to bring Henry directly into our work, and so that was the impetus for his second visit to the residents of Teen Second Life. Cosplaying Dumbledore and talking to a dragon version of our own Barry Joseph, Henry participated in what we called the Hogwarts Dance Party of Good and Evil.
Jenkins dancing with fellow fans in Teen Second Life
Alternating between dancing to Wizard Rock bands like Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys and The Whomping Willows, Henry and Barry chatted about Harry Potter fan culture, its relationship to what Henry calls Participatory Culture and the linkages that Potter-related participatory culture has made to civic engagement around issues like media consolidation, human rights abuses in Darfur and HIV/AIDS.
One of the amazing things about the dance party/lecture format, something we've done before with Henry in TSL, was that we were actually able to bring the conversation we were having back to the songs that we were dancing to, as many of them were expressions of that very civic engagement culture we were talking about; songs relating to how the media can't always be trusted, or thinking about government's role in society.
On the whole, I love bringing events like this into TSL, ones where we really are able to get down and have fun on the level that the teens are at (and there are tons of Potter fans in TSL, I found about a dozen groups in the run up to the event), while also bringing them a level deeper, getting them to think critically about their participation in youth cultures like these, and what it means for their lives. Doing this actually addresses one of the main issues that Henry has written about, what he calls the Transparency Problem; the fact that teens are learning from their involvement in all sorts of media and culture, though aren't aware about the skills that they're developing as a result of this involvement.
A big thanks to Nicholas Kit, who put together the build for the event and helped with tons of the logistics in-world, Sylver Bu, who put together Henry's Dumbledore costume, and Mercury Metropolitan, who came in to help with some last minute preparations.
Check out a full machinima of the lecture below:
And the short version:
And photos from the event.
