Exclusive: Creative Producer Kareem Edouard, Ph.D. talks animated series ‘Work It Out Wombats!’
Premiering on PBS KIDS on February 6 is the animated series ‘Work It Out Wombats!’ featuring a trio of marsupial siblings—Malik, Zadie and Zeke—who live with their grandmother in their diverse and vibrant "Treeborhood,"
The new series helps open the door to meaningful discussions for young children and parents about different ways of thinking, different family structures and diverse traditions, all while using the practices and processes at the core of computer science.
Part of the producing team is Creative Producer Kareem Edouard, Ph.D., an expert in understanding the intersectionality of race, culture, and STEM for students of color as well as issues of culture and inclusion in children’s media. Dr. Edouard's expertise helped ensure that all aspects of the series, which will introduce computational thinking concepts to help viewers solve meaningful problems, learn flexible thinking and effectively express themselves, are looked at through the lens of culture and inclusion. In fact, cultural inclusion is the backbone of how the show’s characters were designed.
Blackfilmandtv.com spoke with Edouard about his involvement with the show.
Were you brought on before or after the series got greenlit?
Kareem Edouard: We came on board after the show was already greenlit.
Did you have previous experience working as a consultant or with kids?
Kareem Edouard: Yes, I have. My partner Dr. Darlene Mortel Edouard, and I are co-founders and partners of Ole Greens Group, a children's media consulting firm. We've consulted with YouTube, PBS, Sensical, and, most recently, the GBH Kids production team for Work It Out Wombats! Our consulting work has had honest discussions with media partners about culture, inclusion, and how to portray authentic representations across digital platforms.
Our consulting firm merges both Darlene's and my interests and academic foci. My work is focused on the intersectionality of race and culture and STEM engagement for Black children. I'm also an Assistant Professor of STEM Education at Drexel University, where I direct the Informal Learning Linking Engineering Science & Technology Lab, also known as The ILLEST Lab, a makerspace for Black children in West Philadelphia. Dr. Darlene Mortel Edouard's work centers around identity and helping young people recognize who they are and how they fit in the world through the lens of cultural studies, visual culture, and Asian American and Filipino American studies.
Did you work with the writers in determining character identities and background?
Kareem Edouard: First and foremost, we want to say that animals are not a proxy for race and ethnicity. As we developed the Culture and Inclusion Plan for the show, we worked with the production team to ensure authentic representations of names, language, and some of the cultural origins found with the animals themselves. We advocated for our team to reflect on their own cultural backgrounds and identities when thinking about the characters in the Treeborhood. Dr. Mortel Edouard was able to share her Filipino culture, creating an entire Philippine Eagle family (the characters of JunJun, Kaya, Amado, and Gabriela). The family became a beacon for shaping the diverse representation on the show, centering diverse perspectives and voices on the show. Our Associate Story Editor drew on his own Puerto Rican heritage to write a story about Carnaval. We have an Alaskan Native writer from another GBH Kids series, Molly of Denali, working with us to bring her lived experience to develop the character Chanáa.
We also wanted to ensure that our animals can and do come from any and all places. For example, one of our characters, Ellie, is a moose of Jamaican heritage. I know there are no moose in Jamaica since they are found in North America. But that doesn't mean that we can't explore different identities. The voice actress who plays Ellie is of Jamaican descent, as is our Senior Producer. With their help and guidance, it felt organic to tell an authentic story of Ellie's Jamaican roots on the show.
Did you learn anything from this experience that you can take to your next project?
Kareem Edouard: Just do you, and be you! In these spaces where there aren't many Black children's content producers, I felt a profound responsibility for being authentic, shaping authentic stories on the show, and creating opportunities for others. At the same time, as an academic, with my work focused on STEM education, particularly for Black youth, I saw this as a call to use this show as a platform to further the discussion of inclusion and diversity perspectives, particularly in computational thinking. This series is going to be a nationally distributed program. The work we did will be in people’s homes all over the country and the potential impact of that and the part I played in developing this series is not lost on me. Plus, there is a vast world of children's media and I am committed to ensuring my following projects, like Work it Out Wombats!, continue to have diverse voices.
With so MANY programs on television from network, cable and streaming, what’s the biggest sell to getting folks to watch this series?
Kareem Edouard: We invite parents and children to join us for a fresh educational experience! At the core of our show is computational thinking, which is all around us and provides young people with the chance to build their computational skills. In addition, parents and caregivers can learn with their children and gain insight into the computational aspects of their lives. With access to tablets, cell phones, and more, we all rely on computational foundations, and this show will help provide new perspectives for everyone.