VOLCO, Commenced 1999

A virtual planet in cyberspace by and for children www.volco.org

VOLCO is an evolving Virtual Online Co-Operative environment, a planet in cyberspace being constructed by children and young people communicating via the Internet and making links across geographic and cultural divides. It is one of the latest in a line of web projects developed by Loraine Leeson since the late 1990's.

The project builds on a range of communications opportunities offered by the Internet and combines the ideas of hundreds of young people into the making of an emergent planet. It taps into the energy of popular net culture and facilitates co-operative relationships between participants of different backgrounds and life experiences. Participants create and upload their own visual and written materials, enabling a new, virtual society to emerge out of their combined imaginations. Designed around principles of conflict resolution, VOLCO makes use of digital technology to support young people in communicating across their differences to create this new online society. Inventing VOLCO children explore new, imaginative and co-operative ways of creating a better life on their own planet.

The web site already incorporates the ideas of over 1000 children, and is still growing, achieving its widespread use through linking with subjects in the school curriculum. Leeson now trains teachers and youth leaders to run it for themselves, and children have taken part from London, North Carolina, Berlin, Chicago, and the Shetland Isles.