{"id":18135,"date":"2020-02-21T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T14:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tvkids\/"},"modified":"2020-02-24T08:58:33","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T13:58:33","slug":"getting-grubby-with-dirtgirlworld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/getting-grubby-with-dirtgirlworld\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Grubby with dirtgirlworld"},"content":{"rendered":"

mememe productions’ Cate McQuillen talks to <\/em>TV Kids about <\/em>dirtgirlworld, a series that aims to teach kids about sustainable living, mixing 3D animation, photomontage and live action.<\/em><\/p>\n

Occupying the intersection between fiction and reality, dirtgirlworld<\/em> is a weird-looking show, according to creative producer Cate McQuillen, and it\u2019s certainly one that has sparked a lot of conversations. The series, which has been on the air for ten years and aims to teach kids about sustainable living, mixes 3D animation, photomontage and live action. \u201cThe reason we wanted to have real eyes and real mouths in the animation is because I wanted the kids to feel that when those eyes are looking at them, whether they were telling a happy story or not, that there was a connection to something deeper than a 2D animation character, that they had soul,\u201d McQuillen says.<\/p>\n

Filmed in McQuillen\u2019s back garden in the Australian bush, the series is produced by a group of about 35 creatives from mememe productions\u2014musicians, storytellers, writers, gardeners\u2014who gather for six or seven weeks each year to shoot the show, \"***Image***\"\u201cso quite an interesting mix as kind of a creative source and thinking behind the project to start off with,\u201d says McQuillen. \u201cWe were already unusual when we stepped in, and I think perhaps that was a lot of our appeal to people\u2014that we were very different from a lot of the producers that were around.” During filming, they live in tents and eat from the garden as they go. \u201cWe filmed it so that as soon as we finished filming it, we ate it for dinner,\u201d she says. \u201cIt’s not just the fact that we create content around sustainability; we create content sustainably.”<\/p>\n

The show was commissioned by the ABC in Australia and bowed in 2009\u2014Al Gore\u2019s An Inconvenient Truth<\/em> had come out a few years prior, putting climate change at the forefront of the global consciousness, and alarm bells were starting to reverberate. The ABC wanted a kids\u2019 show that had eco-friendly values, but not in an academic or preachy way. dirtgirlworld<\/em> is a \u201cnarrative-driven story world that was about friendship and love, fun and nature, and had this sort of embedded sustainable living theme, without hitting anyone over the head with a hammer,\u201d says McQuillen.<\/p>\n

She continues, \u201cSo we wanted to make this world that had an absolute beauty about it to remind people that the world is beautiful. You protect what you love, and the notion of making this project was to engender that love of nature. It\u2019s kind of like a long tale of connecting people back with nature in this sort of lovely way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea for the show came about when McQuillen and her partner, who were admittedly city slickers, bought a little old church in the bush and converted it into a house. They started growing their own food and connecting with nature in a way they hadn\u2019t before. McQuillen stood in awe of the knowledge that the children in her new community had of the natural world, how they knew which animal would come scurrying out from under which rock. She knew that there wasn\u2019t a large variety of entertainment that reflected these children\u2019s lifestyle. \u201cAnd I just thought, I love storytelling, is there a way for us to create a story world that is relevant to them?\u201d she says. \u201cAnd the naivete was, well how hard could it be to make a television show?\u201d<\/p>\n

And so the journey into creating dirtgirlworld<\/em> began, with the show first being made using only animation and eventually morphing into its current mixed-media form. The series then spun out from there, with various real-life dirtgirl initiatives cropping up after the show\u2019s broadcast success. “We moved into working with the government on waste management, so when they roll out a bin now, you can put your organic food waste in as well as your garden waste,” says McQuillen. “We do campaigns across [Australia] around composting, recycling, anything to do with sustainability; we\u2019re kind of the ambassadors for those projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

McQuillen and the mememe productions team have indeed put their money where their mouth is when it comes to sustainable living. \u201cAs much as we\u2019re storytellers, we\u2019re changemakers,\u201d she says, noting that they have chosen to abandon the traditional merchandising route for the show, \u201cand that\u2019s because predominately, a great percentage of that merchandise ends up in landfills or ends up breaking or not being used.\u201d Even when presented with the idea of creating a line of branded kids\u2019 gardening tools based around the show, McQuillen hesitated, instead encouraging people to go out to second-hand shops and purchase used tools. “For us, it was about not creating more waste or even creating more consumers who love to consume,” she says.<\/p>\n

McQuillen has her sights set on taking dirtgirlworld<\/em> and its eco-friendly message around the globe, hoping the show can do for kids in other countries what it\u2019s done in Australia. \u201cI\u2019d love to create a league of dirtgirls around the world. Instead of having the Marvel heroes, why can\u2019t we have a league of dirtgirls?\u201d McQuillen asks. \u201cWhy can\u2019t we have a Vietnamese dirtgirl and get grubby there, and an Indian dirtgirl and a U.K. dirtgirl and a U.S. dirtgirl and a German dirtgirl?\u201d She hopes international expansion will help people realize that it takes an army of voices making small changes locally in order to affect global change.<\/p>\n

dirtgirlworld<\/em> encourages kids to reconnect with nature, reminding them to \u201cgo outside and get grubby\u201d and that \u201cthe little things make a big difference,\u201d McQuillen says. \u201cAnd this is the adult conversation about this; kids would say it\u2019s about going outside, getting grubby and having fun. They\u2019re just connected to the joy of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

mememe productions’ Cate McQuillen talks about dirtgirlworld, a series that aims to teach kids about sustainable living, mixing 3D animation, photomontage and live action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1049,"featured_media":18136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,21],"tags":[2900,2902],"class_list":["post-18135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-profiles","category-top-stories","tag-dirtgirlworld","tag-mememe-productions","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nGetting Grubby with dirtgirlworld - TVKIDS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/getting-grubby-with-dirtgirlworld\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Getting Grubby with dirtgirlworld - TVKIDS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"mememe productions' Cate McQuillen talks about dirtgirlworld, a series that aims to teach kids about sustainable living, mixing 3D animation, photomontage and live action.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/getting-grubby-with-dirtgirlworld\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVKIDS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-02-21T14:00:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-02-24T13:58:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2017\/07\/2020-02-20-TV-Kids-Weekly-Dirtgirlworld-Pic.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"338\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Alison Skilton\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Alison Skilton\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/getting-grubby-with-dirtgirlworld\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/getting-grubby-with-dirtgirlworld\/\",\"name\":\"Getting Grubby with dirtgirlworld - TVKIDS\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-02-21T14:00:23+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-02-24T13:58:33+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/f590d4d1481b8cce2a066e89197c7550\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/getting-grubby-with-dirtgirlworld\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/getting-grubby-with-dirtgirlworld\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/getting-grubby-with-dirtgirlworld\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Getting Grubby with dirtgirlworld\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/\",\"name\":\"TVKIDS\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/f590d4d1481b8cce2a066e89197c7550\",\"name\":\"Alison Skilton\",\"description\":\"Alison Skilton is an associate editor of World Screen. 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