Sky Women in Tech Scholar Rachel Clancy speaks to Irish Tech News

Irish Tech News Senior Editor Simon Cocking spoke with Rachel to find out more about her positive mental health game from children, Get Closer, and about being a Sky Women in Tech Scholar. 

What is your background briefly?

I grew up in Limerick and studied Graphic Design and Visual Communication at Limerick School of Art and Design. When I graduated in 2014 I spent a year in Boston working as an Art Director for the ad agency Hill Holiday. I came home and worked for a bit in Dublin for the design studio Design Factory. In 2016 I moved to London to work as a creative for the ad agency Wieden + Kennedy, and last year I decided to go back into education to study an MA in Independent Games & Playable Experience Design at Goldsmith’s college.

Does it seem like a logical background to what you do now?

Yeah, I think so! When I studied graphics in Limerick we did a little bit of web design and that was my first experience with any kind of coding, and I really liked it but I didn’t spend enough time with it to get comfortable. It was always in the back of my mind that I wanted to learn more about making interactive work.

1 min pitch for what you are doing now?

Get Closer is going to be a mobile game for young children to introduce them to ideas around positive mental health and emotional self-care. I’m coming to the tail end of my master’s degree now, the project being funded by Sky is going to be the subject of my thesis so I’m currently buried in research about designing games for children, games for mental health, how to involve children in the design process, designing for children with learning differences etc!

Why did you get involved with this project?

There were so many reasons I wanted to become a Sky Women in Tech Scholar, not only are they offering funding to support the development of the game, but they also offer mentoring and professional development. They want to support their scholars to become role models for young women choosing a career path, as there’s currently a real shortage of visible women in tech (At present, just 22% of the UK core STEM employment is female)

Another reason is that my project is targeted at children, and I think having the support of a household name like Sky lends a lot of credibility to the work and will hopefully help with reaching out to collaborators and publicising the game when it’s finished.

Why do you think it is such a powerful idea?

Aida and I built Get Closer as part of a hackathon called Global Game Jam 2019 back in January, and we were invited to exhibit the game at EGX Rezzed, a big gaming festival here in London. While we were there we met mental health professionals and educators who told us that the game had potential to become a useful tool for introducing young children to positive mental health practices and help them to develop their emotional vocabulary.

In the UK the statistic is 1 in 8 children are now presenting with mental illness, and while societal attitudes to taking care of our mental wellbeing are changing – there is still a long way to go – and the hope is that by starting with young kids, we can start fostering positive behaviour that will stay with them as they grow up.

How can people find out more about you & your work?

I’m most active on my Instagram @fanceclancy, and I’m going to be reviving my twitter @_Fance because everyone in game development seems to be on there! Also, my portfolio site is http://clancy4u.co.uk/ and is a bit of a nightmare to look at but I like it!

Anything else you’d like to add / we should have asked?

The original prototype for Get Closer is free to play on itch, but the plan is to completely overhaul the game from scratch. This iteration is like a sketch of the idea of a game that uses dialogue options to tell a story about supporting someone going through a depression.