Episode 7

Haeny Yoon:

Welcome to Pop and Play, the podcast all about play in its many silly, serious and powerful forums. I'm Haeny Yoon.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And I'm Nathan Holbert. In this season, we're talking all about young people's media, how to make it, why it matters, what participation looks like, and as many challenges and limitations.

 

Haeny Yoon:

And today we're talking about children's media for our youngest audiences, three through five year olds. What does it actually take to create media and art that takes children seriously and appreciates the quirky and whimsical ways they engage with playing media? Today we have with us Andy Davenport, one of the creators of the massive hit children's show, Teletubbies.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Teletubbies. Haeny, this is huge.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Oh, for sure.

 

Nathan Holbert:

This is huge. Over the years, we have talked to some outstanding, incredibly talented guest artists, scholars, but the Teletubbies are like a cultural phenomenon, right?

 

Haeny Yoon:

Oh, for sure. For sure.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, like my sister who is way older than me-

 

Haeny Yoon:

So we're going to get another scenario with your sister?

 

Nathan Holbert:

My sister, way older than me, right sis? My sister was genuinely impressed when I told her we were talking to one of the creators of the Teletubbies, and my kids who are young and who probably never actually seen an episode of the Teletubbies-

 

Haeny Yoon:

But they know what Teletubbies are.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Knew what Teletubbies are, and were equally shocked that I could be potentially cool enough to talk to one of its creators. So we're in entirely new territory here for our show.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Are we nervous?

 

Nathan Holbert:

I mean, I'm a little nervous. I'm a little starstruck. I'm a little nervous. Aren't you?

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Okay, we're going to get into it. We have a nice long conversation with Andy, but I'm curious in your mind, what makes the Teletubbies this kind of cultural touchstone?

 

Haeny Yoon:

In preparation to answer that question, I had to look at a handy-dandy Reddit sub-threads.

 

Nathan Holbert:

You didn't know. You didn't have an answer.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, I didn't really have an answer. No, I didn't. I had to look at Reddit and see what other people say. I heard a lot of people talk about the set designers, like one comment where it said the set designers went nuts, and I love it.

 

Nathan Holbert:

The set is crazy.

 

Haeny Yoon:

The set is nuts.

 

Nathan Holbert:

It's crazy.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, and I love it and I love the dystopian essence of it. There were so many things that kind of paralleled other shows. I thought about SpongeBob living in his little house underground. I thought about that looked like a bunker. It also looked like something that is in the Hobbit. It looked like something in space. There were just a lot of-

 

Nathan Holbert:

It's got this techno kind of dreamy quality to it. It's really cool.

 

Haeny Yoon:

It's a little bit mysterious and weird, right?

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah.

 

Haeny Yoon:

And so I think that was the biggest thing that every single person on Reddit said. They're like, "This is weird, and I love it for some reason." Or even when you look back on it, you're like, oh, this is very strange and weird and I have so many questions.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I didn't need Reddit to tell me it's super weird and I love it.

 

Haeny Yoon:

But you need Reddit to affirm you. That's why most of us even go on Reddit to begin with. We're like, affirmed.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Affirmed. I must be right.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, community is here. Everybody agrees with me. I love this place.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Up vote for you.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, and so I think that's the fascinating part of it. I think we started off our intro by saying that this is a children's hit television show, but it's actually for everyone, basically. It's one of those things when we go back to Pee Wee Herman too, right?

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah.

 

Haeny Yoon:

It's a different... It's what you watched as a kid. It hits different as adults, but it still hits.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I definitely didn't see it until I was a little older-

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, me neither.

 

Nathan Holbert:

...because it came out when we were older. But even then I had a niece. This is why I gave a shout-out to my sister because I had a niece that was of the age that this show was on, and so I saw it through her eyes and it was always like, what is going on in the show? But she was locked in. I mean, she was totally in it.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, I think that's why I'm interested in talking to Andy because I am always so... It's always such a mystery the kinds of things that children are really into. But I figure that for a lot of creators, it's actually not a mystery that they're making some really intentional moves of what engages young children and what kind of media that they produce and create to actually make that experience something that is generative and thoughtful for them.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And he's clearly got it figured out. I mean, he's Teletubbies, as we said, a big hit, but he's made many hits. So let's bring on our guest here. Let's bring on Andy Davenport. He is a quintuple threat. I had to double check that that was the right word for this, but he's a writer, producer, composer, actor, and puppeteer and his puppets are wild, delightful, very cool. He's also the best known, of course, as the creator and writer of Teletubbies, and he's also the creator, writer, and composer of In the Night Garden and Moon and Me. So I'm excited to have him on.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Let's bring him over. So we have Andy Davenport with us. I'm very, very excited to be talking to you today. And Nathan, you want to start us off with our game?

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. So Andy, we usually get started with just a light game to loosen us up and begin the conversation here.

 

Andy Davenport:

Okay, cool.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And since you've created many well-known children shows, including Night Garden and Moon and Me, but perhaps you're most well known for Teletubbies, especially here in the US. And so in this game, what I'm going to try to do is invite you to reimagine a few episodes of your classics with other famous children's media characters as guest stars. So we're going to invite some other children's media characters to guest on old episodes of Teletubbies.

 

Andy Davenport:

Okay. Right.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Does that sound all right?

 

Andy Davenport:

Yeah, that sounds cool. Yeah. My mind is racing.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I know, mine too. Okay. The other piece that you should know about this is I pulled episode descriptions from Wikipedia, which is insane and hilarious. So forgive me if these seem bizarre, but these are descriptions of your shows.

 

Haeny Yoon:

This is also-

 

Andy Davenport:

I'm sure I remember them all. Yeah.

 

Nathan Holbert:

All right, so we'll get started here. So here we go. Let's try episode 251. This is from 1999. An episode called Fruit Tasting. The description from Wikipedia, Po smells the flowers and says, "Ah." Tinky-Winky comes along and smells the flowers. Po and Tinky-Winky link arms and smell the flowers together. The magic windmill starts spinning and the Teletubbies watch some children tasting fruit. So who should guest star on this fruit tasting episode? Should we have SpongeBob or Wallace & Gromit?

 

Andy Davenport:

Gosh, I mean, who would enjoy tasting fruit? I mean, SpongeBob lives under the sea. I don't know. But there's fruit down there, isn't there?

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah.

 

Andy Davenport:

So he would like it. Wallace & Gromit, definitely. I would imagine a fruit eaters probably with some sort of machine. I mean, I think they would bring a machine, which the Teletubbies would really enjoy because they have a lot of machines that are really, really cool, produce their tubby custard, tubby toast, and they have a Noo-Noo as well, who tidies up. And so, yeah, I think they would be really excited if Wallace & Gromit were to bring a machine, but again, they would not turn anybody away.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Right.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Okay, one last one, and only because you kept mentioning tubby custard, so we have to talk tubby custard. On episode 38 from 1997, My Mum's a Doctor.

 

Andy Davenport:

Yes, I remember that one.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Oh, good. Amazing. Po rides on her scooter in circles before the magic windmill spins. And the Teletubbies watch a mother who is a doctor. Po has too much tubby custard, and she gets tubby custard tummy and doesn't feel very good.

 

Andy Davenport:

I do remember that one.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Laa Laa walks her to bed. She sings a lullaby.

 

Andy Davenport:

Some great sound effects.

 

Nathan Holbert:

The [inaudible 00:08:08] sound effects?

 

Andy Davenport:

They were. They were. Yeah.

 

Nathan Holbert:

So who's going to join this episode, My Mum's a Doctor? Should we have Garfield or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

 

Andy Davenport:

Gosh. Yeah, Garfield seems closer in age, but the Ninja Turtles are really great friends, aren't they?

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, they're great buddies.

 

Andy Davenport:

And so they understand the thing of a bonded group and all of that. I mean, again, I would just say bring them all. Bring them all.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Bring them all in.

 

Andy Davenport:

But yeah, I guess it'll...

 

Nathan Holbert:

The Ninja Turtles also are distinguished by their colors of their bandanas.

 

Andy Davenport:

Yeah, of course, bandanas.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Maybe they have something they could talk about, their favorite colors.

 

Haeny Yoon:

You guys are much nicer than me because I'm looking at this and being like-

 

Andy Davenport:

What would you do?

 

Haeny Yoon:

I'm going to go with Garfield, because he's round and fluffy as well.

 

Nathan Holbert:

That's true.

 

Haeny Yoon:

So he's definitely, just can join the tenor. I feel like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would freak them out because of their definition of their bodies, and then we'll just all have body dysmorphia, and then it would be horrible. Sorry. Also, too much reality TV.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Too much reality TV. Well, thank you Andy for playing this. I love the answer, bring everybody along.

 

Andy Davenport:

I don't feel like I was very good at it.

 

Nathan Holbert:

No, that's the correct answer.

 

Andy Davenport:

But thank you.

 

Nathan Holbert:

It's great. It's great.

 

Haeny Yoon:

I mean, I love the bring everybody along because I feel like that definitely is the ethos of your shows too.

 

Andy Davenport:

Definitely.

 

Haeny Yoon:

It tracks. Okay, so we'll start off with our first question, which is basically, we kind of already started edging towards this, but just talking about play in your own childhood. I feel like you have such a strong messaging about how you want this idea of inclusion and including everybody. So I'm wondering what did play look like for you? Who did you play with? Where did you play? Did media or television or any of that even play a role in how you played as well?

 

Andy Davenport:

Yeah, I mean, I remember... Well, I guess my childhood, it was a tale of two places, really, because I grew up in a suburb of London called Bromley, which was in the 70s, probably not the most vibrant, exciting place to grow up. Like many suburbs, there was not a huge amount going on. Sorry, Bromley, it's probably a lot nicer now but-

 

Haeny Yoon:

Sorry, suburbs.

 

Andy Davenport:

But the British weather often used to force you indoors. And I think a lot of my childhood, I remember playing in my bedroom just with not a lot to do because back in the 70s we didn't have a lot of stuff. So you had to kind of create your own fun and make your own fantasy situations and spend a lot of time drawing or writing stuff or inventing things. And I think it's interesting because I was thinking about it because Bromley, although it wasn't a particularly exciting place, there was quite a lot of creativity that came out of it. So David Bowie came from Bromley, and [inaudible 00:11:06], a lot of the punk movement originated from Bromley, and there were writers like Hanif Kureishi. So there was a lot of creativity seemed to come out of this place that wasn't the most interesting, exciting, possibly for a child.

But on the other hand, the other place I spent a lot of my childhood was in the holidays, I used to go and stay with my grandparents in a seaside town where I was actually born, which is called Folkestone on the south coast of England. And like many seaside towns that was just a place full of play. So it was kind of another extreme. And my grandmothers in particular were very playful people and used to indulge my play a lot. And one of them built me a puppet theater out of an old butcher's box, her husband was a butcher, and it was a meat box that was made into a theater with a curtain on the front that you open and close by pulling a string. And I spent hours making puppet shows. My grandmothers would happily sit there and watch the whole thing.

So yeah, a lot of puppets, a lot of making stuff up. And the same with friends as well. There was a lot of going to each other's bedrooms and making stuff and having big fantasy plays and all of that. So I was lucky. I had a quite rich childhood in my way.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I love that. One of the things you mentioned, I mean when you say, oh, I made lots of puppets. That tracks, right? But also-

 

Andy Davenport:

Yeah, I think a lot of the things I was doing in my bedroom in Bromley, I still do now, but [inaudible 00:12:36].

 

Nathan Holbert:

Same.

 

Andy Davenport:

I might be a little better at it now. I hope.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I also was struck by the way you talked about your grandmother and the fact that you had an audience for a lot of it, right? You weren't just making things, which is really great and exciting, but you're also able to show those things and perform those things, and you had somebody there appreciating you and then cheering you on, and that's so important.

 

Andy Davenport:

Absolutely. It's such a gift that when you give a child your time and the attention, it's such a gift. And when you join in with them in their play, I think that's something a child will never... That's certainly something I won't ever forget. And that's something a child never forgets, is that time that a parent or a grandparent spends with you and really gets into your world. That's a really beautiful thing, I think.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah.

 

Nathan Holbert:

So we talked a little before in the game about Teletubbies, but I'm curious if we could just talk a little bit more about, it's such a distinctive show and also looking at some of your other work. I was talking with Haeny earlier about how there's these kind really interesting kind of through lines that you can notice between the different things that you've produced and created. But I'm wondering, because Teletubbies is such a distinct show, it's such a strange show in so many ways to an adult. I'm curious about where this comes from. Is there an elevator pitch that you could share about what is it? What's the ideas that really kind of honed in on for what you created?

 

Andy Davenport:

Well, I don't know if there was ever an elevator pitch because the show came out of an invitation to tender from the BBC. The BBC sent out a request to, I think 18 different independent production companies to come up with an idea for their prime preschool slot. But Anne, my co-creator in Teletubbies was saying, and she was probably right, that if we didn't respond with something, we'd never be taken seriously by the BBC again. So we had to come up with something. And at the time, I had been showing Anne some characters that I'd come up with, which were spacemen characters that basically came out of watching the moon landings and then having this kind of funny thought.

 

Haeny Yoon:

I see that. I see the inspiration now. Yes. Okay.

 

Andy Davenport:

Well, it just struck me, so funny, at the peak of human achievement basically landing on the moon was the biggest thing a human being ever did. And when the astronauts stepped out of the lander, they had the proportions because of their helmets. They had a big head in proportion to their body, their suits made them have little fat bodies and shorter in arms proportionally and legs. And they looked to all the world like toddlers coming out of this lander. And then what would they do when they... Just jumped up and down. And it just struck me so funny that at this peak moment of human achievement, we returned to the child state.

 

Haeny Yoon:

The silliness of it.

 

Andy Davenport:

And so I had put together these spacemen characters that were literal spacemen, and they said eh-oh and not oh, and they'd landed somewhere they'd never seen anything before. So they were examining objects and trying to work out what they did. And it was for an older age audience, it was a comedy. And so when we sat down with this letter and Anne said, "Do you think you could make those into preschool characters?" And I said, "Sure, let's do it." So immediately they had to have faces because you can't have a blank visor, have a helmet for a preschool audience. But I knew from the get go they needed to be full bodied because they needed to have a very physical existence. They needed to sing physical repertoire as their audience. They needed to be able to run and jump and fall over and roll around.

And so gradually the whole thing began to emerge. We knew that therefore if they were going to be full bodied, everything had to be very big. We had to use adult performers in costume, then we'd have to build a world for them to be in, which again would have to be huge because of the scale of everything. And so everything really grew out of the requirements of the audience, I would say.

And there was a key requirement, which for me was fantastic because I had a background in child development and language acquisition. And where I guess I had an advantage was that the world of children's TV at that time was very much populated with people that came out of education. And so children's TV was very much about school preparedness, getting ready for formal education. Whereas for me, the stuff that was really exciting to play with the TV with was the earlier developmental processes that really we form ourselves from in those first three years of life. And physicality, of course, is a massive thing, and the way that we learn at that time is a particular universal process. And so really building a narrative around that learning process and trying to capture that play within the narratives.

 

Haeny Yoon:

I mean, as I hear you talking, it's like there's an affective aesthetic response that we have to media materials or just any kind of materials. And I think we sometimes forget that, especially in children's programming, because I think right now I hate learning something on TV because I'm like, look, I am watching TV not to learn. I just am doing it to feel.

 

Andy Davenport:

Absolutely.

 

Haeny Yoon:

So I think that's why I watch these reality shows because I want to feel angry or I want to feel excited. I want to feel thrilled or held in suspense or something like that. And I think sometimes we think that automatically kids will watch TV because they want to learn something, and that affective feeling that you get from engaging in something can actually really be meaningful for kids.

 

Andy Davenport:

Oh, absolutely.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I'm also struck by the, we talked to some of our friends at Sesame, and I'm also struck by the different origin stories where you sort of said it kind of very much was intending to teach certain skills and whether they were thinking of it as explicitly school preparation, they were certainly thinking of it as skills and ideas and concepts. And that is different than what you're talking about, which is something much more about experience. And you pull on the Piagetian terms there. But I love how you also end up in similar places where that emotion and that feeling is still kind of core, the extent to when it gets sort of centralized in what happens may be different, but there's still kind of that value for both of you.

 

Andy Davenport:

I mean, it's interesting because I often use this quote from what I like to call a piece of new media. It was the first ever piece of children's literature, and it was published in 1792 as a piece of new media. It had to explain itself. And the introduction, it says that it exists to provide un-fatiguing exercise of mind. And I've never ever heard a better description of what good children's content should provide because quite often I get asked of it, what a kid's learning here? What's going on? What's the point of it all?

And that's what it's about. It's about exercise of mind. And a lot of that is through story, a lot of that is through empathy, through modeling, and just through providing a child with a world where you have bonded relationships, supportive relationships, and where there is acceptance of stuff. I mean, I remember one of the directors of Moon and Me, in fact, was looking at a script and saying, "This is so funny because Mr. Onion is refusing to share stuff." And I was reading through the script expecting that there was going to be something bad would happen to Mr. Onion, but nothing bad happens. It's actually, it's all good. And I said, "Yeah, there's not really anything you can do wrong in my shows because it's just about respecting play and about respecting the child's responses to things and sharing can be difficult."

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, I was going to say something very similar to that because I think that through line with Sesame and your work and just people's media that has really kind of captured us as adults is because they take kids seriously. I think the approach can be different and the outcome can maybe different and the intention might be different, but it's this idea that kids are these complex human beings, that their only mission is to learn and become adults is a little bit flat. It's this idea that we take them very seriously right now at the present, and we're making stuff because they're feelings and thoughts and ideas matter.

 

Andy Davenport:

What I think is important is that giving a child something they really want to talk about and approaching them from within their own culture is far more effective in terms of grappling with ideas about the world or telling them how the world works. And of course, all of that is best done through play because as play is our peak state, it's the best language of childhood, I think.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I wonder, now that we're talking language, I wonder if we could talk a little bit about kind of both the extremely limited vocabulary of the characters on your shows, but also the incredible expressiveness of that vocabulary. I mean, they're always squeaking and beeping and making funny noises and saying their own names over and over again, right?

 

Andy Davenport:

Yeah. What they have in common is they speak a play language and language play as we know is hugely important to language development, but it's also part of building the picture of what they are for the child. Because one of the most important things I think about any show should create that playful atmosphere. Say to the child, we're now in play. And yeah, I mean the Teletubbies language for instance, that was very controversial. I mean, they speak a play language. The language is meaningful, all the words have meaning that they speak, and it's modeled on the genuine first utterances of a child around the age of one. So it's all there.

But I can remember a parent making a complaint, I think it was to the BBC, said, "My child used to say hello properly. And ever since Teletubbies, they just say, eh-oh, all the time and my child's language development is going backwards because they're watching Teletubbies." And the answer is quite... If you say to the child, "What does eh-oh mean?" They'll say, "Well, it's a Teletubbies way of saying hello." It's a playful construct and it's language play.

And the child is not going to assume that eh-oh is the correct form of hello just because they've heard Laa Laa say it, is any more than bringing a child up in a house with a dog is going to make them bark when someone rings a doorbell or growing up with a microwave is going to make them go ping when they've finished doing something.

 

Nathan Holbert:

When everything's done.

 

Andy Davenport:

It's not how children... Children understand right from the beginning that there's different forms of language for different situations and play languages for playful situations. And we are creating a playful situation first and foremost when we're beginning these shows, because that's the child's peak state. In play they are more able to take on information, retain information, process information. They use them much more adventurous language in play than they do in real life. And new language always emerges in play. It's serious stuff, but play is really, really important.

 

Nathan Holbert:

That's so fantastic. I love that. It's a beautiful answer too, just the play language and the sort of sophistication of that and the ways in which that can become a different way of interacting with the world. It's funny, and again, we keep kind of coming back to this, but it's funny how as adults we just keep wanting them kids to be more adult-like. And so a kid saying eh-oh instead of hello is like, ah, why can't you act like a human? Why are you acting like a Teletubby? But that's great.

 

Haeny Yoon:

I mean, I'm just wondering, were you ever surprised by any of the audience's reaction to your show, Teletubbies? I'm sure that you got a range, and I think you kind of alluded to it. There's some parents that will be like, "What the hell is this? I don't understand it. I don't want my kid to be watching it." So were you surprised by some of these reactions?

 

Andy Davenport:

I guess the biggest surprise was the day after the show went out for the first time in the UK and everybody hated it. Because when you see a show go out for the first time, you're kind of really excited. And it's sort of, what's people going to think of it? And then this... I mean, it was almost universal derision around the show, and it's something that a lot of people forget is how at the beginning the reception was really bad and people wanted it off the TV. There were questions asking in the British Parliament about it, about the dumbing down of British culture as exemplified by the Teletubbies.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Oh my God.

 

Andy Davenport:

Yeah, the Minister of State for school standards said he was going to fight back against the dumbing down of British culture exemplified by the Teletubbies. That was a direct quote.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Wow.

 

Andy Davenport:

And then he was asked if he had ever seen the show. He said he hadn't.

 

Nathan Holbert:

He said, "Eh-oh."

 

Andy Davenport:

I feel this is unfair. But it was a really.... I think the show just looked so different to what had gone before. And I think at that time, it's easy to forget what the kind of accepted form of preschool TV was. It was usually an adult presenter with puppet kind characters that were one way or another representing kids learning stuff. And they would hang on every word of the presenter. And sometimes the presenter was sort of a half-child half-adult as well in a way that it doesn't really exist in the real world either. So I think that could be quite a confusing thing for a child as well, maybe. And so yeah, there was this accepted form. So Teletubbies had no presenters, it had no adults. So a common response was, "Well, how are the children supposed to know how they're supposed to respond? How are they supposed to know what they're supposed to be learning if they don't have an adult tell you?"

 

Nathan Holbert:

[inaudible 00:27:21].

 

Andy Davenport:

And so there was some funny stuff, but what was really interesting was that gradually, I guess people notice children were really enjoying the show, and that became the subject after a time was about how children were laughing, jumping up and down, how they watched the show with the whole of themselves, if you like, in such a physical and all-in kind of way, and were laughing and really enjoying it. So we had the sort of bad reaction to start with, and then that gradually turned around as time went on.

 

Haeny Yoon:

So let's shift over to a more recent project, Moon and Me. And I think there is, to us it feels like a distinct aesthetic that you have around the whimsical, leaning towards the fantasy and play part of it, but then it's also a little bit different from Teletubbies. And so could you talk a little bit about how you developed your aesthetic and what accounts for some of these shifts?

 

Andy Davenport:

Yeah, well, the aesthetic really, again, back to creating a playful atmosphere and creating something that is warm and inviting. And I think part of that is the way something looks and sounds and feels, and I think it's really important that what you show a child is really as beautiful as you can make it really. So in aesthetic terms, I pay a lot of attention to the way a show looks and to the way the characters look and the environment. I always go back to a poem actually by Walt Whitman, which is called There Was a Child Went Forth, and it's something that I always call out whenever I'm introducing at the beginning of a production.

And is called, There Was a Child Went Forth, and I might see if I can remember it. It goes, there was a child went forth every day, and the first object they looked upon, that object they became, and that object became part of them for the day or part of the day. It's such a great expression of what we're trying to achieve here, because what you show a child really does matter to them and stays with them for a long time. And so it's really important that it's the best quality in every way that you can muster.

So the aesthetic is a part of that. And I have something that I don't know many people have. I have a color palette designer specifically who is a woman called Sophie Herxheimer who is an amazing color artist and will take my crude palettes that I start off with and then turn them around and make them really into something vibrant and joyful and wonderful.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Wow.

 

Andy Davenport:

So the color of the palettes of the show is really important to me. Because I can't stand this thing when people say to you, kids really love bright colors. And so everything is quite often-

 

Nathan Holbert:

[inaudible 00:30:15].

 

Andy Davenport:

Children's content is really noisy and just loud. And so whether it's on the screen or whether it's in the environment of a toy store or whatever, or a bookstore or whatever, the stuff that's associated with the show still has this palette that really works.

And with Moon and Me, I guess the shift, maybe the shift you're talking about is in scale as well, because that was, the show was set in a toy house and I wanted to shoot it absolutely at toy house scale to give the feeling that you are looking through a tiny window into a toy house where the toys have come to life and you can actually see the smallness of it. So you can see the stitching on the blanket or you can see the brush marks on things that have been painted. And it's very much about making and about handmade stuff. Again, a lot of children's content and some of it's very good by the way, but a lot of it's animated and I really wanted to make sure that it was all about real objects and about the way real objects behave. So the characters are rod puppets, they're puppeteered and then the rods are removed in post-production.

And the whole thing came out actually, again, becomes out of play because... And in this situation, at the beginning, I set up with Sheffield University, so shout out to Sheffield University and to Jackie Marsh and Dylan Yamada-Rice. They set up a play project, a study of toy house play. So basically built a big and beautiful toy house and then rigged it with microphones and cameras and then allowed a load of children of different ages to play with it. And the cameras and microphones were not pointing at the children, they were pointing at the toys.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Wow.

 

Andy Davenport:

So it was kind of like a Big Brother house for toys. So it was really about-

 

Haeny Yoon:

That's awesome.

 

Andy Davenport:

...what do the toys, what happens to the toys? What lives do they lead when subject to the play of a child? And that was fascinating. So one of the things that every child did, no matter their age was they all walked a character or a toy up the stairs between levels and then down the stairs and often [inaudible 00:32:25] trying getting their hands tangled up among the stairways and everything. But that was really striking. And then of course a lot of sitting around, assembling around a table or sitting in chairs or going to bed, waking up. And that really, again, showed me what is it that a child finds really fascinating about a toy house.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, I mean, I appreciate that description of your process too, because the intricacy and the complexity in which you create these things, I think also-

 

Nathan Holbert:

The research.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, really, it tends to the seriousness of kids enjoying something that is pleasing and beautiful to them. And I was thinking the same exact thing as you were talking about kids like bright colors, so let's make our classrooms like red, orange or yellow and green or whatever it is, primary colors. And it's not that they don't enjoy that. So I'm not... Don't at me people after this and say like, "Haeny said that you can't have primary colors, whatever." But I love the palette idea that what goes together that creates some kind of response, that creates an aesthetic that kids also like. And so I appreciate that description.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And the handmade nature, I just want to point that out too. You mentioned that the importance of that in your process, and it makes me think of how... I absolutely love that because it makes me think of how my children both would have this tendency, especially with a show like Moon and Me, a thing that looked handmade, they would immediately click that they could go make that. And then they were constantly taking things that they were experiencing in other kinds of media, whether it was TV or even video games. And they would then go and draw, or they would go cut out paper and they'd glue things and they would engage in these craft activities where they were blending their worlds across different forms of... And that to me is always the most kind of thrilling thing, is to see how they connect things that they're passionate about and that they're excited about. And you've said multiple times, it was all through play, right? Play kind of became the avenue to do this exploration. So I think that's so cool.

 

Andy Davenport:

Oh, yeah. I mean, play is the fail-safe really. If you're looking to engage a child, you just look at what it is that engages them in play because it's a completely fail-safe strategy as far as I can see.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I am looking forward to the cut scenes of Moon and Me where we have the dollhouse confessional, so you said you had the the Big Brother cameras.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, that's so great. This is speaking to me on many levels.

 

Andy Davenport:

Yeah, we didn't think of that part.

 

Nathan Holbert:

The Onion gives a little quick confessional there.

 

Haeny Yoon:

That's so funny.

 

Andy Davenport:

Yeah, I mean, it was a really fun thing. I can remember, there's so many scenarios that were funny, but there was one situation because the house had a working doorbell because a lot of the play was around crossing thresholds of different types, and there was a lot of play around the front door. But because of the working doorbell, you'd have one child quite often who was on the outside of the house and one who was playing inside with toys, and one would ring the doorbell. And then at one point there was one child who was playing with a toy in the attic of the house but when the doorbell rang, they had to walk the toy down two flights of stairs to get down to the front door, which took so long. It took so long that the child who had rung the doorbell had kind of lost interest and gone to do something else and then had to be called back to say, okay, I'm here now to answer the door. You rang the bell off 10 minutes ago.

But that kind kind of detail, the attention to detail in play, I think really is both astonishing and delightful and wonderful. The part of the joy of that moment is the fact that the child has the imperative to go down the stairs and then therefore has to step on every single one on the way down with the toy. And it's really fantastic.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, I mean, it goes without saying that I really like the angle and positioning of the cameras that it doesn't focus on the kids themselves, but it focuses how they embody these objects and how these objects kind of move through this space, which I think is so delightful.

 

Nathan Holbert:

That's great. Love it.

 

Andy Davenport:

Yeah, it was really... And one of the things that was interesting was the lives these toys had, the velocity of them was extraordinary because first of all, it would be time for bed, so everybody would go to bed and be tucked in and then we all left. Then it was morning, almost straight away, but then they all had to get up again. And then it was time-

 

Nathan Holbert:

It feels for me too, to be honest.

 

Haeny Yoon:

It's like severance.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I had to think of the same thing.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Oh my God.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Well, Andy, I was going to say thank you for spending the time... I know your time is precious, and so we want to thank you for taking some of your day to hang out with us. And I'm just struck by your thinking and the inspiration of the different works of art that you've created and the ways in which you really respect and value children as people and thinkers and players. And thank you for bringing that here with us today. Really appreciate it.

 

Andy Davenport:

Oh, not at all, really. I'm always very happy to talk about play. It's what a wonderful subject. So yeah, wonderful. Thank you. And thank you for all your work. I really enjoy Pop and Play. It's fantastic. So thank you.

 

Haeny Yoon:

So speaking of play and adults, we'd like to end our episode by talking about what's popping. What are you watching, reading, engaging with, playing with that you feel like the listeners should know more about?

 

Andy Davenport:

I forgot about this part.

 

Nathan Holbert:

What are you playing with?

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, what are you playing with?

 

Andy Davenport:

Oh, what am I playing with? Well, funnily enough, talking to... I've just moved, or I've just bought a small apartment in Folkestone, going back to my childhood seaside town. So that's big for me at the moment. I'm really enjoying that. And I don't know. You see, I'm terrible because I'm always late to the party whenever there's anything that everybody's watching or doing. I'm always the last to watch it. So I was watching The Traitors. That's the thing that's been getting me recently, but I'm watching it several years after everybody else discovered it. But yeah, that can be terrible-

 

Haeny Yoon:

Look, I respect that because I am late to that party as well.

 

Andy Davenport:

Thank you.

 

Haeny Yoon:

I am late to The Traitors party as well, and now I'm completely obsessed with it. So I just finished watching season one from years ago.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I have to check it out.

 

Andy Davenport:

Oh, great. Yeah, no, it is great. The only trouble is that I find... I go to bed, start watching it, and then it's like two in the morning before you know it. It's terrible.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Because they always end the episode so expertly with the cliffhanger-

 

Andy Davenport:

[inaudible 00:39:10].

 

Haeny Yoon:

...that you have to watch the next few minutes of the next one and then it's over.

 

Andy Davenport:

It's so true. Yeah, they know what they're doing, don't they?

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, definitely. Well, that's great. We love Traitors. Thank you for that.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I got to watch it. I haven't seen it.

 

Andy Davenport:

Oh, good.

 

Nathan Holbert:

This is a good recommendation.

 

Andy Davenport:

Oh, you haven't? Oh, you even later than me?

 

Nathan Holbert:

So I'm even later.

 

Andy Davenport:

Oh, that's perfect.

 

Haeny Yoon:

You're like completely late to the party.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I'm way behind. I'm way behind.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yes. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Andy. Thank you for talking to us. I feel like the time really flew.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, totally.

 

Andy Davenport:

This was great. Well, thank you.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. Okay.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Thanks. Bye.

 

Andy Davenport:

Oh, thank you so much.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Pop and Play is produced by Haeny Yoon, Nathan Holbert, Lalitha Vasudevan, Billy Collins and Joe Rinaferri at Teachers College, Columbia University with the Digital Futures Institute.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Audio recordings for this episode by Abu Abdulbaghi.

 

Haeny Yoon:

This episode was edited by Billy Collins and Adrienne Vitullo.

 

Nathan Holbert:

For a transcript and to learn more, visit tc.edu/popandplay. Our music is selections from Leaf Eaters by Pottington Bear used here under a creative Commons Attribution non-commercial license. Blake Danzig and Meyer Clark provided our social media and outreach support. Follow at popandplaypod on Instagram. Thank you to Abu Abdulbaghi for support with our website and additional materials.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Do you teach about play and pop culture? Check out our topics collection, organize for the classroom. And of course, don't forget to share Pop and Play with a friend or colleague.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And thanks for listening.