Last week was our first Sandbox workshop at Watershed (not including the welcome workshop), and it was fantastic. It felt like there was a real feeling of great progress in all of the teams work, with everyone already starting to make and test ideas… we even had our first working prototype, which by this point in the process might be considered a REACT record?

This was the first workshop we’d had with no Young Advisors present, and so we used the morning to do some brief updates from all the projects, hearing about what they’d been up to since we last met (‘loads’ is the short answer to this!) and then we spent the afternoon with the Wonder Woman/ Freelance Producer, Kim Plowright.

Kim talked about the rhythms of a project, through structure, story and audience, pointing out the bits that are often missed in a project plan are the very beginning (‘discovery’) and very end (‘maintenance’). She highlighted a particular danger around these moments, that often the ending of a project for the project team is the same moment when the project is released to the world, and as such the time when audiences are in the discovery phase of the project itself.

In general theres a really exciting bunch of projects and happy buzz from the teams about what they're up to; some of the teams are preparing packages to send to the Young coaches ahead of the next sandbox, there's talk of swings in the studio and discussions of stories that sit inside teleportation devices.

One of the highlights of the day for me was playing with the Strax prototype over lunch (check out the Strax team playing with their prototype in the first photo). Lots of talk of Sea Horses, War Owls and halving the other players eel powers. Great fun- I'm already looking forward to the next meet up to play again!