Made-in-Nunavik animated video series aims to promote learning

These are some of the characters who make up Thomassie Mangiok’s new animated series set to launch later this year, one of a number of initiatives funded through the Esuma school perseverance project.

Sila has a hard time waking up in the morning.

That means the Inuk teen has trouble making it to school on time. In fact, the 16-year-old struggles to understand why he should be in school at all.

A lot of Inuit teens can probably relate to Sila, which makes him a key character in a new animated series geared towards Nunavimmiut youth.

Thomassie Mangiok, the brains behind Pirnoma Technologies, is working on a 10-episode animated video series that tackles some of the barriers to education and learning in northern Québec.

Nirukiittumiut will be one of the first made-in-Nunavik television series, launched as part of the region’s larger school perseverance project.

Esuma seeks to create a movement among regional organizations to encourage and promote school attendance and success in Nunavik, home to one of the highest drop-out rates in the country.

Mangiok’s new Inuktitut-language series aims to promote education in its various forms.

“Episodes will not necessarily repeat ‘going to school is the solution’ because our goal is to instill hunger of learning in young people’s minds,” he said. “Schools have good tools for learning, but they work best when students want to learn.”

Sila, for example, can’t seem to find the value of being at school — he’d rather be on his father’s snowmobile exploring the land on his own, and with friends.

But when the snowmobile breaks down, Sila has to learn how to fix it.

“That’s when he discovers the importance of learning,” Mangiok said.

“He tries to take shortcuts at first, but doesn’t succeed,” he said “But he finds there are resources all over to help him learn, at school and throughout the community.”

To date, Mangiok has completed seven of the 10 episodes he hopes to launch by the end of 2015.

He’s created each of them himself, the dialogue and the animated characters, employing people in his hometown of Ivujivik to do the voice-overs for each character.

Although the series’ dialogue will reflect Nunavik’s Hudson coast, Mangiok said the episodes are meant to be understood in any Inuit community.

He hopes to make the series available free of charge online, likely through Youtube and iTunes, and on DVD format through Nunavik’s schools.

Mangiok said he may create an English and French version of the series later on, if there’s a demand.

And he won’t rule out the possibility of a second series or a spin-off game that would be made available on mobile devices.

You can see a list of Esuma’s ongoing projects here.