Seven years ago, I sat down at my desk and asked myself a big question: Could I invent a kids’ TV show that would spill out of the screen like a candy store of creativity — a show that was bright, cute, and funny, and that captured the magic of play and the limitless ability of young children to transcend reality and become immersed in their own imaginary worlds? Could I defy the conventions of kids’ programming that have historically excluded 150 million children with disabilities around the world, and use my own experience as a disabled person to create a world so tangible that it made my little fingers want to reach across the screen to grab adorable stop-motion characters?
From these questions, Mixmups was born, a new 52-episode series about three friends – Pocket the Bear, Giggle the Cat and Spin the Rabbit – who go on fun-filled adventures with their guardian, Lucky Loubber Bird, who has a funny nose and beak. Each episode begins with the friends brainstorming play ideas – going to space to eat moon cheese sandwiches, finding a magical library where all the books talk, or putting lost dreams in a jar so they can be remembered forever. They place toys and objects into a blue mixing box, add sparkly things and use the magical wooden spoon to “mix the magic” (of play and imagination) and go on an adventure until they are swallowed up by the box.
The show, part-funded by the BFI’s Young Audiences Content Fund, is a celebration of children’s love of play, mixing and the transformative power of imagination, but beneath the surface there’s a lot of reflection on how disability should be represented in the children’s industry.
The idea for Mixmups began when I was cleaning out my children’s rooms in 2015 and noticed a lack of representation of disabilities among their toys. I Googled them but found nothing except one-legged pirates or grandparent dolls in grey wheelchairs. I wondered why no one had ever creatively tried to represent the aesthetic of disability in toys, and why these dolls were confined to the dusty margins of design.
“The different styles of how kids play inspired each character.” Mixmups. Photo: Paramount
That didn’t feel right, so together with Karen Newell, a play consultant who worked on Teletubbies children’s reactions and research, and the mother of a blind son, I launched the “Toy Like Me” campaign to challenge the global toy industry to do better. I started modifying toys and posting pictures of them online. Photo of Tinkerbell doll with hot pink cochlear implant The product went viral. Parents wanted to buy it. Deaf adults wished they had it when they were kids. Soon I was asked to consult for a global toy brand, but when, after extensive consultation, I received a design for a blind character with stereotypical dark glasses, I realized I was stuck in a never-ending cycle of disability misunderstanding. The only way to break this cycle was to take a creative leap beyond everything that had existed before and make something entirely new. Could I come up with a format that was compelling enough to exist without mentioning disability, and then add a character with a disability to enrich and deepen the premise?
I first asked myself, “What do all children have in common?” The answer was an innate curiosity and a desire to play. Play is how children make sense of the world. I fell in love with play theory, learning about play schemata (the building blocks of preschooler exploration) and how much children learn from simple actions like rolling a toy wheel, putting objects into a box, pushing a baby doll in a stroller, mixing paint colors, and connecting Legos.
Next, I found a writing mentor in children’s author Joyce Dunbar. Dunbar taught me to be creatively open and to know that the biggest obstacle to creativity is my own inner critic. When children are young, they draw, scribble, and splatter paint without hesitation, with little interest in the final product. Around age 5, they begin to become conscious of what others think and judge them. This hampers the young, free joy of a toddler’s creativity. Joyce taught me to let go of self-criticism and create like I was 3 years old.
Before long, I began to imagine the story and world of Mixmups. I inspired each character with the different styles of how kids play: the neat pockets, the creative and inventive giggles, and the rowdy and physical spins.
“I wondered why no one had creatively expressed the aesthetics of disability in toys.” Mixmups. Photo: Paramount
I went to a children’s media conference in Sheffield with some rough drawings and story fragments, where by chance I met the core creative team behind Mixmups, all of whom had experience raising disabled children or supporting families with health issues. I started working with McKinnon and Saunders, who had created the puppets for Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox and Rastamouse.
I started talking to kids who use wheelchairs; they wanted to see the characters walk short distances and be transferred to the sofa. They wanted to show that the wheelchair is an enabling tool, not a restraint, and that the ability to walk is not binary. We honed the concept of magical access, where the world becomes flexible for the characters, cupboards magically slide down to the right height, everything is within reach.
Because children wanted to see characters with imperfect bodies, the doll designers gave the Giggle character a curvature of the spine, and her gait and range of motion were based on the physical parameters of just one child model, as every wheelchair user is different.
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Once Giggle’s body was built, I designed a wheelchair to fit her perfectly, making the world of Mixmups fully accessible. Whereas the playful structures found all over British seaside areas would be frustratingly inaccessible to kids in wheelchairs in real life, I created a jumbled house for Mixmups with a lift, automatic doors, a wheelchair-accessible swing and even a carousel of spinning cups inspired by Great Yarmouth, a seaside town in Norfolk near my childhood home. The result is Mixington Valley, a fantasy space where barriers have been removed and everything is open to everyone.
Fantasy spaceā¦ Mixmups. Photo: Paramount
For my character Pocket, who, like me, has low vision, I created his faithful guide dog, Yapet. Our animation team was trained in the paw positions, hand movements and subtle body language of a blind child when working with a guide dog, so you can see Pocket stretching out his little paws to explore his surroundings and sweeping the ground looking for obstacles with his tiny white cane. But just like the blind children we consulted, Pocket doesn’t use any mobility aids at home.
The art is purposefully clean, with vibrant high-contrast colors, shifting clouds in the sky, and facial expressions that reflect the characters’ emotional journeys. Pocket, Giggle, and the non-disabled Spin are voiced by children with disabilities who have acting experience; some of them are newcomers, and their lisps and mispronunciations add authenticity. The adult Lucky Ruber Bird is not a disabled character, but she is beautifully voiced by Gillian Dean, a blind actor in her first role in a children’s comedy. The writing team all have experience of disability and are well versed in play theory, which drives the simple storytelling of each episode, making it appealing and relatable to preschoolers.
As Mixmups prepares to launch, seven years after the start of this journey, some days I feel like I’ve been dragging an elephant by its tail up a hill. I’d be lying if I said it was easy. While the landscape of the children’s industry is very different now (you can easily get Barbies with hearing aids or Legos with different limbs), Mixmups still holds its own as a brand made by people with disabilities. We hope that our unique combination of humor, warmth, and playful creativity, underpinned by deep consideration of how to move disability representation from a dusty corner into a magical and vibrant fantasy world, will inspire a younger audience, disabled and able-bodied alike, to pick up their wooden spoon and “mix some magic!” with Mixmups.
Mixmups launches on Channel 5’s Milkshake on November 4 at 8.15am.