TryLife

Aim or objective of the film
Life is about choices. Those we make and those we don’t. An interactive drama co-produced with young people, public health experts, police and public youth services to allow young people to make difficult life choices, and then experience the consequences in a safe virtual environment (hence ‘Try Life’).
Episode 1 of  covered a wide range of issues including drugs and alcohol, sexual health, teen pregnancy and peer pressure. ‘Sophie’s story’ followed a young girl the night before her final exam. She is invited to a party and the user decides what happens during that night.
Episode 2 follows Aaliyah’s story. It deals with sexual exploitation of girls by gangs, knife and gun crime, and substance abuse.
Episode 3 ‘Jacob’s story’ is due for release in May 2015 and follows a young man struggling with mental health issues.
Target audience
Our early focus has been on the 13-25 age group but episode 3 is aimed specifically at the 10-14 age range. It is hard hitting, it is not about preaching what is right or wrong. It allows young people to experiment in a safe environment, make life choices on behalf of filmed characters and watch the consequences of their actions.
In the past week alone 09/04/2015 – 15/04/2015 just on Facebook 2,183,409 people have engaged with our page. Our posts have reached 26,663,673, we have 14,357 new likes taking our page to 164,417 fans.
Episode 1 was filmed in the North East of England but is relevant to any northern city in the UK.
Episode 2 & 3 focused on children and young adults living in South London, but is accessible and relevant to young people living in any large inner city facing the same public health and social challenges.
Episode 4 will see us travel to Oxford and film an episode at Oxford University covering issues around psychosis, eating disorders and mental health.
Episode 5 has been commissioned in Leeds and will cover eating disorders.
Episode 6 see’s us working in partnership with York University and covering violent relationships.
Supporting evidence or research for the film’s message
All outcomes arising from the choices made in the narrative are evidence based. A team of public health, social care, crime reduction, youth offending and law enforcement professionals advised the screenwriters, and software algorithms were developed to inject a level of realism in the probability of negative and positive outcomes resulting from user choices (e.g. choosing to have unprotected sex carries a probability of contracting a sexually transmitted disease in the next scene, or not). The films are created bottom up by the young people and their experiences.
Impact or evaluation of film’s influence on target audience and/or public health issue (if any to date)
Qualitative evaluation identified a significant positive impact on the 1,000 young people engaged in the process (script and dialogue workshops, acting, music and all aspects of film production involved local young people). In the first three months from online launch on 25th October 2015, the episode had been ‘played’ 60,000 times through young people sharing on social media. 98% of users were under 25 years of age and 17% of those users were aged 13-17.
Research studies involving Oxford and York Universities are being planned.
Mention of accompanying materials, documentation, campaigns, programs that are linked to the film (if any to date)
A TryLearning e-learning resource is currently in development to allow the episode to be used in a workshop setting in schools and colleges. This section will allow professionals to work through individual storylines with young people and is accompanied by supporting educational material relevant to the issues covered. An education pack which covers drugs and alcohol, sexual health, relationships and equality and diversity is also being added to our learning section. 15 NHS trusts have already signed up to the TryLearning section with a national rollout as the main aim for this addition.