Digital Voices of the Future: Children's visions of future UK treescapes revealed through gaming

英国树逃的未来属于今天的儿童和年轻人：他们将见证和评判英国树逃计划的长期遗产。然而，在时间和空间上探索它们与树篱的关系的跨学科研究仍然很少。“未来之声”（VoF: NE/V021370/1）联合开展了一项研究，旨在以有意义的、充满希望的方式了解和吸引儿童重视树木。甚至在他们很小的时候，孩子们对树篱的形式和功能的理解就已经被发现是微妙而复杂的，并且通常是在与观测和预测的气候变化相关的挑战中建立起来的。VoF正在地方、区域和国家各级的教育和环境政策及实践中产生研究影响。然而，VoF的影响需要扩大与最重要的利益相关者，儿童本身。这一知识交流提案旨在解决这一差距，通过不同的游戏环境扩大对全球数百万潜在用户的影响。每个孩子都有不同的树上逃生经历，但这对他们的想象力和创造世界意味着什么呢？网络环境是否有可能成为孩子们梦想、思考、分享和创造空间的地方，让孩子们预测和模拟他们未来的不同出路？我们能否利用网络环境作为一个知识交流民主化的空间，在规划和种植真正的英国树时，放大并赋予孩子们声音？该项目将VoF的主要发现应用于共同制作和共享游戏环境，使孩子们能够想象和探索未来的树洞，作为对他们一生中做出的不同选择的回应。通过在现实环境中模拟现有的和新的树篱，我们可以将碳储存的新知识以及儿童如何理解由VoF产生的树篱应用到游戏环境中。这将为孩子们提供机会去设想他们想要居住的世界，与他们的树篱共生，体验未来的模拟，否则很难想象，甚至更难将自己置于其中。该项目以默西森林地区2所学校（Parklands小学、Ellesmere Port天主教高中）的7名儿童（8-13岁）为中心，项目团队使用Roblox和Unity两个平台共同设计和开发游戏。每次接触包括2天（每个学校1天），每天包括两个60-90分钟的互动共同设计和制作工作坊，每个工作坊约30名儿童。这将吸引约120名儿童参与游戏设计和开发。在会议期间，项目团队将编译并整合每个研讨会中开发的资源，以开发两个游戏环境中的资产、机制和叙述。默西森林社区林地将在项目结束后举办一场活动，将游戏开发与现实世界的社区植树联系起来。该项目的产出将包括沉浸式（Unity）和交互式（Roblox）在线游戏，使用户能够在自己的现实世界和想象的环境中开发，可视化和分享树逃。对这些环境中植树和管理的结果进行建模和模拟，将使“树篱”在未来的样子可视化，并使“树篱”提供的环境（如碳封存、小气候、生物多样性）、社会经济和文化效益可视化和量化。这些游戏提供了潜在的全球性知识交流机会（游戏邦注：《Roblox》每月拥有约1.45亿用户，主要是儿童）。与默西森林合作的案例将评估好玩的方法和游戏如何提供强大的机制，通过输入2025年修订的默西森林计划，将儿童的声音纳入树木和林地的规划中

The future of UK treescapes belongs to the children and young people of today: they will witness and judge the long-term legacy of the UK Treescapes programme. Yet, interdisciplinary research that explores their engagement with treescapes temporally and spatially remains rare. Voices of the Future (VoF: NE/V021370/1) has co-produced research seeking to understand and engage children with valuing treescapes in a meaningful, hopeful manner. Even from their early years, childrens' understanding of the form and function of treescapes has been found to be nuanced and sophisticated and is usually framed within the challenges associated with observed and predicted climate change. VoF is generating research impact within educational and environmental policy and practice at local, regional and national levels. However, the impact of VoF needs scaling-up with the most important stakeholders, the children themselves. This knowledge exchange proposal seeks to address this gap to amplify the reach to a potential global audience of millions through different gaming environments.Every child experiences treescapes differently, but what might this mean for their imaginings and world-making? Is it possible for an online environment to be the dreaming, thinking, sharing and making space for children to predict and model the different treescapes of their futures? Can we use online environments as a space to democratise knowledge exchange, both amplifying and empowering the voices of children in the planning and planting of real UK Treescapes?The project applies key findings of VoF to co-produce and share game environments enabling children to visualise and explore what future treescapes could look like as a response to different choices made within their lifetimes. By simulating existing and new treescapes within real-world contexts, we can apply new knowledge of carbon storage and how children understand treescapes arising from VoF into game environments. This will afford children opportunities to envisage the worlds they would like to inhabit in symbiosis with their treescapes and experience a simulation of futures that are otherwise challenging to imagine, and even harder to place themselves within.The project centres on 7 encounters between children (8-13 years) at 2 schools within The Mersey Forest locale (Parklands Primary School, Ellesmere Port Catholic High School) and the project team to co-design and develop games using two platforms: Roblox & Unity. Each encounter comprises 2 days (1 day at each school), with each day involving two 60-90 minute interactive co-design and production workshops, each of ~30 children. This will engage ~120 children in game design and development. Between encounters, the project team will compile and incorporate the resources developed in each workshop into development of assets, mechanics and narratives within the two game environments. The Mersey Forest community woodland will host an event beyond the end of the project to link game development with real-world community tree planting.The outputs of the project will comprise immersive (Unity) and interactive (Roblox) online games enabling users to develop, visualise & share treescapes in their own real world and imagined settings. Modelling and simulating the outcome of tree planting and management in these environments will visualise how treescapes may look in the future, and can visualise and quantify the environmental (e.g. carbon sequestration, microclimate, biodiversity) socio-economic and cultural benefits provided by treescapes. These games offer potentially global scaling (Roblox has ~145 million monthly users, mainly children) of knowledge-exchange opportunities. The case example working with The Mersey Forest will evaluate how playful approaches and gaming can offer a powerful mechanism to incorporate the voice of children into the planning of treescapes and woodlands, through input to the 2025 revision of The Mersey Forest Plan