SOUL PAINT
Soul Paint is a multi-award winning virtual reality experience that asks: ‘Where are you feeling?’
Story Juice’s Hannah Wood was Script and Experience Design Consultant for Soul Paint, created and directed by Sarah Ticho and Niki Smit, backed by behavioural scientists and researchers, and narrated by Rosario Dawson.
It has toured the world and won multiple awards, including the SXSW 2023 XR Experience Special Jury Prize and Best in Health and Wellness at the Games for Change Festival 2024. It’s also been recognised at Downing Street as a leading UK innovation.
“Hannah was such a joy to work with. Her ability to break apart a complex piece of work that needed to balance aligning script with our scientific foundations and experience design for people unfamiliar with virtual reality was a big ask. She reviewed and analysed what we had created and then collaborated with us to create a powerful piece of storytelling whilst also giving all the essential handholds of an interactive piece. We couldn’t have been more thrilled with the outcome and look forward to working together more in the future.”
You’re invited to reveal your unique inner reality by creating an expressive VR artwork, then experience what others have created and shared…
Soul Paint takes you on a journey that uses body mapping and interactive storytelling to explore new ways of expressing and exploring your own emotional experience, including 3D painting on personal avatars, playful embodied interaction like dancing, and voice recording. Using immersive technology in a genre-pushing way, the experience encourages new forms of embodied insight, allowing us to reflect on the diversity of human experience on an individual and global level. In Forbes, Director Sarah Ticho shared her vision and the therapeutic value of the experience: “Often we don’t have words to describe how we feel […] Body mapping can show the connections between emotions and sensations, serve as interactive storytelling and be a fascinating way of starting conversations.” 
Watch the trailer
Soul Paint exists at the nexus of immersive technology, creative storytelling and wellbeing to explore the richness of the embodied human experience.
READ: Rosario Dawson to Narrate Immersive Virtual Reality Project ‘Soul Paint’ (Exclusive)
The Hollywood Reporter
“Soul Paint is epic and intimate in its scope and potential. This finely tuned experience gives XR new possibilities for its application across disciplines and research that explores and interrogates the human experience. This piece encourages us to engage in creative play while also inspiring us to actively discover and share our innermost feelings without judgement.
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“I am honoured to have been a part of such an important and innovative work of art and wellness. Soul Paint is an incredibly moving project that invites you to examine the core of the human experience and gives you permission to acknowledge and accept those feelings. Sarah, Niki, Liz, and the entire team behind Soul Paint have been a joy to collaborate with. I’m excited to see how this work will help and inspire others.”
