Are you the parent or guardian of a child between the ages of 9-14? A huge new Arts Council-funded wellbeing project called The Rez – an exciting sci fi comedy drama podcast and graphic novel produced for pre-teens, co-created by Dr Martin Spinelli, Senior Lecturer in Media & Cultural Studies – is looking for children to be interviewed for a critical part of the project.

With the aim of speaking to about a dozen young people, material from the interviews will help underpin and support some of the key ideas of the podcast story.

Questions will focus on kindness, and what it looks like. What do the children do when they notice someone is lonely? What do they think about school? How does advertising work? What would they do if the internet went down?

All these are important and relevant questions for young people, but some are eerily prescient in these strange and unprecedented times we find ourselves in.

More widely, the project aims to target hard-to-reach young people, but also investigates the pros and the cons of a life spent increasingly online.

The Rez, co-created by Dr Martin Spinelli and Dr Lance Dann, who teaches audio and digital media at the University of Brighton, hopes to discover a multi-media, multi-platform template for harnessing the power of podcasting and social media to improve the emotional well-being and resilience of adolescents through pro-social messaging embedded in exciting story.

This is an opportunity to contribute to a high-profile, worthy, adolescent mental health project; it would only take about 15 minutes; and it would be recorded completely online, with no names or identifying details used.

If you are interested, register your child’s interest by simply contacting The Rez producer Jack Jewers on jfjewers@gmail.com.