Enfys is a collaborative project between Cariad Interactive and Mudiad Meithrin (MM), a voluntary organisation which aims to give every young child in Wales the opportunity to benefit from early years services and experiences through the medium of Welsh. Enfys is funded by the Arts Council of Wales, Our Space Engagement Funding for New Audiences

The overarching goal of the project is to generate interaction between peers, early years setting staff and families, through the Welsh language. The proposed activities could take place in large-scale venues, for example at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, as well as smaller preschool learning environments.

The idea is to create a motivating interactive environment for children to explore colour themes though rhythmic movement and singing. Camera inputs capture children’s action, which are output onto a variety of surfaces, as a sequence of bidirectional, cause and effect, call and response, activities.

This is based on technology available on the High Street, such as a Kinect (Xbox) camera, microphone and a portable device (eg. a laptop, iPad or iPhone).

Phase one of R&D is now complete. Following a series of design sessions and experience prototyping activities at Cylch Meithrin Trelai, and Cylch Meithrin Aberdâr, we have created one multimodal prototype, “Spectrum”.

On its own, Spectrum functions as a playful application that can be used to enhance singing and creative movement activities within the existing Foundation Phase curriculum. For phase two we are planning a series of downloadable applications.