Molly Ollys Story Jam 3 (Midlands)

For those of you who haven't attended one of our previous story jams, please do have a read of the info below to find out more! 

The OHT Birmingham hub have teamed up with the Institute of Coding, Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership and Molly Olly’s Wishes to run a series of story hacks. 

Molly Olly’s Wishes was set up by Tim and Rachel Ollerenshaw in 2011 following the death of their daughter, Molly to cancer aged 8. Molly had been diagnosed when she was 3 years old and underwent numerous operations , chemotherapy, radiotherapy, stem cell transplant, blood transfusions……..the list goes on. It was a constant battle for her and extremely tough on Molly’s siblings, Ben and Maeve (2 and 5 years old at diagnosis). Supporting patients and their family’s emotional well-being through that journey can help them to navigate the treatment journey. 

Molly Olly’s Wishes is a local charity with national reach which supports children with terminal or life threatening illnesses and helps them and their families to help with their emotional wellbeing. They have developed therapeutic toys and books to both children directly and to hospitals throughout the UK. These books have won the British Medical Association Patient Information awards.

They have a character called Olly the Brave who goes through cancer treatment and experiences all sorts of scary things. The books have gone down a storm for primary aged children but the charity have identified a need for something a bit more grown up to support secondary school aged children who have the same problems and anxieties. 

Enter the Leamington games industry….. 

We are putting together a crack team of specialists and running a series of 3 story jams at the absolutely awesome STEM centre at Leamington College to turn Olly and his journey into a digital product to help children round the country (possibly the world) to deal with a difficult diagnosis and the feelings this creates for the affected child and the ripples to siblings and school friends. 

We aren’t superstitious so we are having the first story jam on Friday 13th September with 2 more happening before Christmas. We are working on a way for people to submit / provide feedback online so if you don’t want to come to the place voted the best place to live in the UK for a day trip (I’ll be making cakes) then we hope you’ll be able to contribute from afar using the Itch platform. https://itch.io/jam/11097/preview 

We understand that an understanding of IP rights and ownership is important in these sorts of events where there is existing IP being built upon. 

We have asked our legal advisors to give a brief so that everyone is clear on who owns what and will send that through as soon as we have agreed it. 

We hope you’ll join us in working together to help make the journey with cancer easier for the young people of the UK. 

----------------------------------------------

Accessibility

We have a little fund to make our events more accessible (woop woop!)

If for any reason there are barriers to engaging in the community we invite anyone to apply for up to £30 (but ask for more if you need, worth a try) per person per event to cover personal costs to improve this. The money can cover just about anything, including but not limited to child/other care, taxis if travelling around is tricky, trains if you live out in the countryside, a live-captioner, recording of the event or loss of earnings if you have a side job along your studies. Who are we to judge! If you feel it’s a barrier, we agree too. Find out more