Creative Keynote: Emma Watkins

Emma Watkins, who rose to fame as a member of The Wiggles, told TV Kids Festival viewers about her new series, Emma Memma: Sing. Dance. Sign., as the virtual conference came to a close today.

Watkins, whose keynote conversation with TV Kids’ Kristin Brzoznowski can be seen here, has been performing as a dancer since the age of 3. Her passion for movement later expanded to an interest in sign language, and she earned a Diploma of Auslan (Australian Sign Language) and is currently studying for a Diploma in Interpreting and her Ph.D., focusing on the artistic integrations of sign language, dance and film editing. Earlier this year, she debuted the character Emma Memma and is developing Emma Memma: Sing. Dance. Sign.

“People around the world have been researching the benefits of music and dance and movement for children for so many years,” said Watkins. “There’s such a plethora of research that supports movement and music in children’s learning. Something that we learned many, many years ago was that connection that children have to associate concepts and words with music—it helps their understanding of that particular subject. It’s lovely to be able to use media now to combine all of those forms and give children options. I think in the past we’ve been so laser-focused on just one, whether it’s just music or just visual, whereas now we can provide lots of different options.”

Watkins is drawing on her interest in sign language, dance and music for her new series, Emma Memma: Sing. Dance. Sign. “Everything that we give to children visually, they’re absorbing. Everything in the frame should support that goal. And something that we realized was that we weren’t doing that enough. So Emma Memma really is a brand-new children’s character, but [also] really a vehicle to explore all of this. How can we have sign language on-screen, dance that supports the sign language, visuals that support the sign language? Can the animation support sign language? How does that all feed in so that everything that you’re seeing on-screen is the same meaning, as opposed to a generic dance move that doesn’t support the actual concept?”

To launch the brand, music videos were rolled out on YouTube. On that strategy, Watkins noted: “How great is YouTube? We’re in such a fortunate position now where people can share media across the world and lots of different platforms. We wanted to be able to use this last year to test the music and the movement and the animation. YouTube has been a great platform to test those features and how they connect together and see who’s connecting with what, what countries are watching and what kinds of sign-language linguistics we need to take into account. So while sign language is different in every country around the world, we want to be able to use a basic set of iconic gestures so that we can connect people from all around the world without having to know a specific set of sign-language skills. YouTube has been fantastic for that because we can see all of that data in the backend, and this hopefully will help us drive into other platforms like [with] a linear series and on-demand projects. And so it just gives a really good foundation for content creators, regardless.”

On how the children’s media industry is faring in terms of representing people who are deaf, Watkins said: “It’s one of those areas that has a particular sensitivity around it. And that’s what’s hard, I think, for people that are not native sign-language users like myself. I’m not deaf myself, but I recognize the need for connection and cultural bridging. We just have such a lack of understanding about how much more representation and inclusion we need in any project. I think right now we’re just not doing enough, as in everyone across the world. We’ve had some beautiful representations of deaf culture in media, particularly from North America. But in Australia, we don’t have that exposure yet. Our sign language here is really important and significant, as is every other sign language in the world. The dream would be to have other sign languages on the world stage, but also to have characters that are played by deaf artists. We just don’t have enough. And it seems bizarre that it’s not being used more. But really, we are in the best situation; we can learn from each other like this online. We can connect with other deaf artists online or when we’re traveling. So really, there’s no excuse. We need to make more projects and do more.”