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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-09-12
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDf2h1xQKZM
this is the photograph of my dad I don't know exactly when it was taken I know that it was sometime in the early seventies because it does not a moustache he's clean shaven I've only ever seen my task with a moustache this is how one since before I was born since the summer of nineteen seventy four way before the photo was taken in Cyprus where he's
from in nineteen seventy four once a significant year for the country I was armed conflict which led to the division of the on and on July twentieth that year my father was taken to a prisoner of war camp my quick separate soldiers and held hostage for ninety three days it was during this time but he grew his moustache a few years later he moved to England
where I was born and raised we know she lives in east London I move to north London in the early nineties to a neighborhood that was home to many techie separate increased performance knowing that we be going to school with great separate children my dad had some very clear instructions for us I want you to find creek separate children his I want you to bring them
to our house but then the only to make friends I want you to understand that we're all the same so based on this advice my brothers and I make friends specific separate kids including the keys on the phone talks who was and is one of my very best friends they came to our house we are to us she's now one of the government is my child
what that did not allow us to use the conflict in Cyprus as an excuse for fear of a dehumanization of our neighbors encouraged us to to be friendly to be open I'm to experience for ourselves actually finding common ground is not that difficult if you give it a chance around three and a half years ago I moved from he stumbled back to Helsinki where I'm from
having also lived in London Paris in Stockholm over the last twenty years I brought with me my British Turkish the Prius husband and %HESITATION soon after our son was born around that time most of Europe was affected by the refugee crisis because of the unrest in the Middle East and parts of Africa we started to see growing polarization fear and xenophobia in both public and social
media directed not just against refugees but immigrants in general I'm here in Finland we'd we had done increasing number of nationalist demonstrations and attacks against innocent people the atmosphere felt tense uncomfortable in our country and having lived in in cities why multiculturalism was the norm rather than the exception this out with hatred really shocked and saddened me and so I don who himself is a foreigner
in Finland he felt it even closer in her famous Ted talk the wonderful Nigerian author Jim among Dadhichi talks about the danger of a single story a story that uses stereotypes and categorizes people into one specific mold unfortunately many tabloid newspapers are culprits of using the single story narrative in order to sell more newspapers naturally this may lead to misunderstandings and that in turn maybe took
more polarization more fear and more xenophobia in our society so it sat on I have been making films for the past fifteen years and throughout that time we've been trying hard to bring forward multiple perspectives looking beyond the news headlines to tell human stories that can help audiences understand and empathize with people from all walks of life in two thousand and ten we started experimenting with
immersive technologies three sixty story telling and virtual reality we wanted to see if by giving the audience the opportunity to explore space home or workplace or maybe a village and meets a person in a space what actually change people's perceptions of each other contact theory tells us that contact between two groups of people leads to tolerance and acceptance and further studies have shown that the most
important factor in changing attitudes it's emotional connection starting to like someone once you get to know them but it's not always easy to get to groups of people together as we know you must of storytelling allows us to build lifelike experiences and allows us to be transported into another person's reality the situation in Finland made us want to do something how could we use immersive storytelling
to humanize to build a common ground and to celebrate and accept our differences subtle remembered his father's words from his childhood make friends with Greek Cypriots and bring them to our house for dinner they're people just like us these words kept coming back to him and the idea of sitting down and dining with the so called other felt like a powerful moment to explore the site
is involved into an immersive story experience could then the time three sixty but the audience is invited to deny with the from Finnish families from different ethnic backgrounds you can look around their homes in three hundred sixty degrees then click on different food on the table to find out how the food was made and you can click on people bring them to life and watch their
personal stories unfold actual documentaries you can even sit with the family in virtual reality and shed a dinner experience with them now this is all good and well could this help us change attitudes telling stories in this way help us change us to we're invited to run a workshop as a school in a small town in England I'm a teacher invited us is concerned about the
increase in vocal intolerance and racism in high school the classic works which was comprised of thirty one children age twelve and thirteen I'm on the beginning of a process we did an assessment to reveal their attitudes towards people from different backgrounds I'm in one section the assessment they're invited to look at the six pictures you see behind me an artist how much common ground they felt
they could have with these two people in the pictures now as we may have expected the children felt I could have more common ground with people who looked more like themselves so person one person for person six scored significantly higher than person to person to impose some five then I got to meet the people who I don't school of a personal space is the homes that
went places and I got to know them through short documentaries on virtual reality experiences after that I took a second assessment see if it been any change in their attitudes and the hot the children felt more empathy with one of the people I don't know if I have more common ground middle six but the most significant change came person to person three imposing five Habiba Zamora
Muhammad and perhaps the most eye opening results was the fifty five year old time to join the Mahomet and the US used towards him in the first assessment Muhammad came second from last when they only had one picks the judging by but after they spent ten minutes with Muhammad he shot up to number one he was a person that I felt I had the greatest connection
with having given him a chance this experience among others have made us hopeful about the opportunities that immersive storytelling can offer in facilitating real attitude change and the results indicate that many of us haven't seen us to empathize on to find common ground with others even with those people who we assumed that we have very little in common with there was a twenty year gap between
so does father's hostage experience in nineteen seventy four and certainly key becoming close friends in nineteen ninety four perhaps the most of storytelling could help speed up the process of us getting to know and understand one another better and ultimately help us create more peaceful world thank you
