this is a photograph of my dad I don’t
know exactly when he was taken but I
know that it was sometime in the early
70s because he doesn’t have a moustache
his clean-shaven I’ve only ever seen my
dad with a moustache because he’s had
one since before I was born since the
summer of 1974 way before I was born
the photo was taken in Cyprus where he’s
from in 1974 was a significant year for
the country there was armed conflict
which led to the division of the island
on July 20th that year my father was
taken to a prisoner of war camp by Greek
Cypriot soldiers and held hostage for 93
days it was during this time that he
grew his mustache a few years later he
moved to England where I was born and
raised we initially lived in East London
and then moved to North London in the
early 90s to a neighborhood that was
home to many Turkish Cypriot and Greek
Cypriot families knowing that we began
to school with Greek Cypriot children my
dad had some very clear instructions for
us I want you to find Greek Cypriot
children he said I want you to bring
them to our house for dinner I want you
to make friends I want you to understand
that we’re all the same so based on this
advice my brothers and I made friends
with lots of Greek Cypriot kids
including Nicky zeniff on toast
who was and is one of my very best
friends
Nikki ater our house we ate at hers and
she’s now one of the godmothers of my
child my dad did not allow us to use the
conflict in Cyprus as an excuse for fear
or for dehumanization of our neighbors
he encouraged us to to be friendly to be
open and to experience for ourselves
that actually finding common ground it’s
not that difficult if you give it a
chance around three and a half years ago
I moved from Istanbul back to Helsinki
where I’m from having also lived in
London Paris and Stockholm over the last
20 years I brought with me my British
Turkish Cypriot husband and 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 tabloid and
social media directed not just against
refugees but immigrants in general and
here in Finland we we had an increasing
number of nationalist demonstrations and
attacks against innocent people the
atmosphere felt tense and uncomfortable
in our country and having lived in
cities where multiculturalism was the
norm rather than the exception this
outward hatred really shocked and
saddened me and for serda who himself is
a foreigner in Finland he felt it even
closer in her famous TED talk the
wonderful Nigerian author Chimamanda
Adichie 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
may lead to more polarization more fair
and more than a phobia in our society so
Sara and I have been making films for
the past 15 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 2010 we
started experimenting with immersive
technologies 360 storytelling and
virtual reality we wanted to see if by
giving the audience the opportunity to
explore space a home or workplace or
maybe a village and meets a person in
that space would 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
is emotional connection starting to like
someone once you get to know them but
it’s not always easy to get two groups
of people together as we know immersive
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 common ground and to celebrate and
accept our differences
SoDo remembered his father’s words from
his childhood
make friends with greek cypriots and
bring them to our house for dinner there
are 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 these ideas evolved into an
immersive story experience called dinner
time 360 where the audience is invited
to dinner with different Finnish
families from different ethnic
backgrounds you can look around their
homes in 360 degrees you can click on
different food at 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 in short
documentaries you can even sit with the
family in virtual reality and share
their dinner experience with them now
this is all good and well but could this
help us change attitudes could telling
stories in this way help us change
attitudes we were invited to run a
workshop at a school in a small town in
England and the teacher who invited us
was concerned about the increase in
vocal intolerance and racism in her
school the class we worked with was
comprised of 30 white children age 12
and 13 and at the beginning of the
process we did an assessment to reveal
their attitudes towards people from
different backgrounds I mean one section
of the assessment they’re invited to
look at the six pictures you see behind
me and asked how much common ground they
felt they could have with each of the
people in the pictures now as we may
have expected the children felt they
could have more common ground with
people who looked more like themselves
so person 1 person 4 and person 6 scored
significantly higher than person 2
person 3 and person 5
but then they got to meet the people one
of them they got to explore their
personal spaces their homes their
workplaces and they got to know them
through short documentaries and virtual
reality experiences after that they took
a second assessment to see if there’d
been any change in their attitudes and
they had the children felt more empathy
with all of the people they felt like
they’ve had more common ground with all
six but the most significant change came
with person to person three and person
five habiba Zamora and Mohammad and
perhaps the most eye-opening result was
the 55 year old taxi driver Muhammad and
the assjuice towards him in the first
assessment Muhammad came second from
last when they only had one picture the
judging by but after they had spent ten
minutes with Muhammad he shot up to
number one he was the person that they
felt they 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
have it in us to empathize and to find
common ground with others even with
those people who we assumed that we have
very little in common with there was a
20-year gap between Surdas father’s
hostage experience in 1974 and Sardar
and Nicky becoming close friends in 1994
perhaps immersive storytelling could
help speed up the process of us getting
to know and understand one another
better and ultimately help us create a
more peaceful world thank you
know exactly when he was taken but I
know that it was sometime in the early
70s because he doesn’t have a moustache
his clean-shaven I’ve only ever seen my
dad with a moustache because he’s had
one since before I was born since the
summer of 1974 way before I was born
the photo was taken in Cyprus where he’s
from in 1974 was a significant year for
the country there was armed conflict
which led to the division of the island
on July 20th that year my father was
taken to a prisoner of war camp by Greek
Cypriot soldiers and held hostage for 93
days it was during this time that he
grew his mustache a few years later he
moved to England where I was born and
raised we initially lived in East London
and then moved to North London in the
early 90s to a neighborhood that was
home to many Turkish Cypriot and Greek
Cypriot families knowing that we began
to school with Greek Cypriot children my
dad had some very clear instructions for
us I want you to find Greek Cypriot
children he said I want you to bring
them to our house for dinner I want you
to make friends I want you to understand
that we’re all the same so based on this
advice my brothers and I made friends
with lots of Greek Cypriot kids
including Nicky zeniff on toast
who was and is one of my very best
friends
Nikki ater our house we ate at hers and
she’s now one of the godmothers of my
child my dad did not allow us to use the
conflict in Cyprus as an excuse for fear
or for dehumanization of our neighbors
he encouraged us to to be friendly to be
open and to experience for ourselves
that actually finding common ground it’s
not that difficult if you give it a
chance around three and a half years ago
I moved from Istanbul back to Helsinki
where I’m from having also lived in
London Paris and Stockholm over the last
20 years I brought with me my British
Turkish Cypriot husband and 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 tabloid and
social media directed not just against
refugees but immigrants in general and
here in Finland we we had an increasing
number of nationalist demonstrations and
attacks against innocent people the
atmosphere felt tense and uncomfortable
in our country and having lived in
cities where multiculturalism was the
norm rather than the exception this
outward hatred really shocked and
saddened me and for serda who himself is
a foreigner in Finland he felt it even
closer in her famous TED talk the
wonderful Nigerian author Chimamanda
Adichie 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
may lead to more polarization more fair
and more than a phobia in our society so
Sara and I have been making films for
the past 15 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 2010 we
started experimenting with immersive
technologies 360 storytelling and
virtual reality we wanted to see if by
giving the audience the opportunity to
explore space a home or workplace or
maybe a village and meets a person in
that space would 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
is emotional connection starting to like
someone once you get to know them but
it’s not always easy to get two groups
of people together as we know immersive
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 common ground and to celebrate and
accept our differences
SoDo remembered his father’s words from
his childhood
make friends with greek cypriots and
bring them to our house for dinner there
are 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 these ideas evolved into an
immersive story experience called dinner
time 360 where the audience is invited
to dinner with different Finnish
families from different ethnic
backgrounds you can look around their
homes in 360 degrees you can click on
different food at 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 in short
documentaries you can even sit with the
family in virtual reality and share
their dinner experience with them now
this is all good and well but could this
help us change attitudes could telling
stories in this way help us change
attitudes we were invited to run a
workshop at a school in a small town in
England and the teacher who invited us
was concerned about the increase in
vocal intolerance and racism in her
school the class we worked with was
comprised of 30 white children age 12
and 13 and at the beginning of the
process we did an assessment to reveal
their attitudes towards people from
different backgrounds I mean one section
of the assessment they’re invited to
look at the six pictures you see behind
me and asked how much common ground they
felt they could have with each of the
people in the pictures now as we may
have expected the children felt they
could have more common ground with
people who looked more like themselves
so person 1 person 4 and person 6 scored
significantly higher than person 2
person 3 and person 5
but then they got to meet the people one
of them they got to explore their
personal spaces their homes their
workplaces and they got to know them
through short documentaries and virtual
reality experiences after that they took
a second assessment to see if there’d
been any change in their attitudes and
they had the children felt more empathy
with all of the people they felt like
they’ve had more common ground with all
six but the most significant change came
with person to person three and person
five habiba Zamora and Mohammad and
perhaps the most eye-opening result was
the 55 year old taxi driver Muhammad and
the assjuice towards him in the first
assessment Muhammad came second from
last when they only had one picture the
judging by but after they had spent ten
minutes with Muhammad he shot up to
number one he was the person that they
felt they 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
have it in us to empathize and to find
common ground with others even with
those people who we assumed that we have
very little in common with there was a
20-year gap between Surdas father’s
hostage experience in 1974 and Sardar
and Nicky becoming close friends in 1994
perhaps immersive storytelling could
help speed up the process of us getting
to know and understand one another
better and ultimately help us create a
more peaceful world thank you
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