Still: The Imaginary Friend - Steye Hallema (part of Cinekid's MediaLab)

MediaLab is the beating, interactive heart of Cinekid, the world’s number one festival for young audiences, in which kids can play, explore, create and marvel, all the time getting to understand the breadth, potential and intricacies of the digital world.

This year’s theme of ‘Is This Real?’ takes kids “into the realm between reality and illusion; between the physical and the digital, and between dream and reality,” thereby presenting further opportunity for kids to explore, but also to apply reason as to what is and what is not the real deal. It also helps them determine why it matters to make this distinction, a question they can explore through play. 

“The focus of MediaLab, like the focus of the Cinekid festival, is to create world citizens,” underlines the event’s new Head, Leonieke Verhoog.

Verhoog, herself the mother of a four-year old and a ‘bonus’ thirteen-year-old, has been an avowed fan of Cinekid for the past 20 years or so, almost as long as the MediaLab event she now heads up, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2023. “I really love the concept and the whole idea of bringing technology to children; but [I love it] also as a professional, seeing and applying this amazing new stuff.”

This 25th MediaLab offer is as diverse as ever, with elements united by the ‘Is This Real?’ theme. In Dutch interactive maestro Steye Hallema’s The Imaginary Friend*, young audiences are invited to befriend an eight-year-old struggling with the loss of his mother, and must therefore traverse a delicate line between fantasy and reality. Elsewhere, kids can test their intuition with the Fake News Quiz (Dries Depoorter) and then join Visueel Verteld’s CNN: Cinekid Not News workshop where they can create their own fake news in the guise of a news anchor, complete with deep fake face transplant. As fun as this will be, there is an underlying ethical dimension. “They will have to think about why people actually make fake news,” Verhoog underlines. 

“That's the whole goal of MediaLab - to make children think, but start with playing.” 

More fun is to be had at MediaLab playing Deviation Game (by Tomo Kihara & Playfool) where participants can pit their wits against an AI in a Pictionary-type digital installation. In Have You Herd? by Nou&Herkauw, your virtual self can define and shape the landscape across which a crowd of fellow players are moving. In Holobiont by Aukje Dekker & Arthur van Beek (Sexyland), a team of lifeforms [in this case kids!] collaborate to become the artwork itself - and the more kids the better!

A new initiative in 2023 is MiniLab, designed for audiences aged 4 to 7. One of the key installations is the AI-oriented Studio Kleurplaat, in which kids can bring dragons, elves, aliens, or even a toaster to life, proving that the much-maligned AI can provide “boundless opportunities for making your creative ideas a reality - it’s like magic.”