The Bridge Project – Development

The Bridge is a creative program for upper primary designed to disrupt the potential link between excessive online gaming and gambling harm.

The Bridge tackles behaviours of excessive gaming and screen time through great storytelling and diverse interactive activities designed to reach the diverse learning preferences in an everyday grade 5/6 classroom.

The Kids Thrive creative team has collaborated with pre-adolescent kids to co-design a suite of animations, discussion starters and arts activities in this powerful prevention and early intervention program.

Through taking the journey over the bridge with our protaganist Helmette, students and teachers can raise their awareness of the addictive nature of gaming and potential links to future gambling harm.

The Bridge is designed for teachers to use direct-to-class with their grade 5/6 students.

The Bridge begins as a joyful exploration of gaming and then takes students and teachers on a more discerning discovery of hooks threaded through gaming to keep kids playing and paying.

Teachers and students will never look at gaming the same!

‘I’ve just learnt that games are doing something behind our backs!’ Cameron, grade 6 student North Altona Primary School

‘I can never see a poker machine at our local pub the same way again! I thought I was just teaching the children. But I got schooled 100%.’ Jess, teacher North Altona Primary School.

‘We found that the loot boxes in almost half (45%) of the 22 games we analysed met the criteria to be considered psychologically similar to gambling, even though they are rated as appropriate for adolescent players under the age of consent for gambling.’

The Conversation, June 28, 2018

The Bridge is the latest in our ten-year legacy of working with children aged 0-12, co-designing creative programs to empower children to take positive action for change in their lives and their communities.

International research shows that kids as young as nine are already gambling and links between this behaviour and excessive online gaming have been found. The Bridge disrupts this link in pre-adolescent children.

The development phase of this project brought together Kids Thrive artists and students from Altona North Primary School to co-design a series of creative prevention and early intervention learning resources. These online resources are designed to help children identify risky behaviours and develop self-control strategies, building protection from future gambling harm. These creative education tools have been developed for use by teachers and community educators.

The National Health Service, UK, has confirmed the opening of a new treatment centre, alongside up to 14 new NHS gambling clinics nationwide, to address significant mental ill health linked to addiction – January 2020

Funding for the The Bridge project came from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation’s Prevention Partnerships Program, which aims to mitigate gambling harm through a range of community education and prevention programs; and Creative Victoria’s Creative Learning Partnerships Program (CLPP), which aims to partner schools and artists to deliver creative learning projects.

The Bridge creative resource kit is now available to schools and the public from the Victoria Responsible Gambling Foundation of Victoria.

The Bridge creative resource kit includes:

Series of short animations
Creative learning activities
Reflective conversation starters
Teachers’ background resources

Meet The Bridge development team

Andrea Lemon and Andrea Rieniets – Lead Artists

Andrea Lemon and Andrea Rieniets partnered with the following extraordinary project artists and year 6 students at Altona North Primary School to bring The Bridge to life.