Teach Inspire Create Conference 2024: meet Sophie Deen

Through her awesome "Agent Asha" series, Sophie brings together tech education and storytelling, blending spy adventures with STEM concepts to make learning a blast. With a diverse background as a lawyer, tech enthusiast, and children’s play therapist, she brings a unique touch to every educational initiative she’s part of. Sophie's work, celebrated for sparking creativity and boosting digital literacy, includes exciting partnerships with big names like Google and the UK Department of Education, all with the mission to empower kids to be creators and critical thinkers.

We reached out to Sophie to find out more about her creative journey, why she thinks it is so important to make tech skills accessible for children, and what she will be speaking about at the Conference!

If we don’t know who we are, then we have a huge crisis on our hands - we can all be swayed by whatever anyone tells us we are. Creative education is vital because it helps young people discover who they are and how they can uniquely express themselves. It's not just about making beautiful things – it's about empowerment, developing critical thinking skills and self-awareness.

By fostering creativity, we empower kids to chart their own paths rather than blindly following the crowd. Creativity drives societal evolution and innovation. It's what pushes us to question the status quo and envision better systems. It’s also totally human - helps us process our emotions, understand ourselves and the world, and I personally believe, it gives us the opportunity to get into a flow state and brings about a contentment unmatched in any other non-creative pursuit. It’s vital for our psychological well-being.

Growing up in a third-generation immigrant family, the focus was on financial security rather than artistic pursuits. So, I took the "sensible" route of becoming a lawyer. But I've always had a creative streak – that kid who loved to read, write, and live in imaginary worlds.

My pivot to the creative industries came from working with children and noticing the lack of diversity in the stories they consumed. The protagonists were predominantly white boys, cast as leaders, coders, engineers, and heroes. It made me dig deeper into the subtle messages we were sending kids about what they could achieve and who they should be based on their gender, ethnicity, or background. I started questioning who was crafting these narratives and why. I wanted to put different stories out there, ones that showed a wider range of possibilities and inspiring role models. Ultimately, I wanted stories that help us question the system.

The digital divide exacerbates social divides. Studies show kids internalise stereotypes about what roles and jobs are "not for them" as young as 4 years old. We need to challenge these limiting beliefs early on.

Technology isn't just for the stereotype of a lonely kid sitting in a dark room, unable to function in the "real world". We live in a digital world - so much around us is built on code. Just like we need to read and write to navigate our society - but we don’t all need to be authors or playwrights, we need basic tech skills and digital literacy to be empowered in our increasingly digital landscape.

If a lot of our world is created using technology, then we need diverse creators to build the best possible version of that world. And by making tech skills accessible to all children, regardless of background, we're giving them the tools to be creators and innovators in our future, not just passive consumers. And we desperately need this diversity - in the UK, only 19% of the tech workforce are women, and just 22% are from ethnic minority backgrounds, according to the 2022 BCS Diversity Report.

Technology is lowering barriers to entry in creative fields. There are now tools and apps to help aspiring writers, artists, videographers, and musicians bring their visions to life without needing expensive equipment or formal training. You can create or co-create in small groups and showcase your work to a global audience. That's brilliant. On the flip side, there's perhaps too much emphasis on speed and efficiency, which can impact the reflective nature of the creative process. There is also a risk of homogenisation as everyone uses the same tools, and potential issues with overreliance on technology.

At Bright Little Labs, we're exploring how creators with wholly owned IP can use AI as an editing companion - something that knows your creative world inside out. We're excited about tools that can take some of the administrative burden off creatives (for me, that's production schedules), freeing us up to focus on the fun bits (like doodling!). We're also looking into animation pipelines - can we use a game's 3D engine to create a single asset base for kids' IP, streamlining rendering, speed, and asset control? These are just a few ways we're innovating in this space.