Sesame Tree: Sunny Days Ahead for Northern Ireland

When Sesame Workshop VP Senior Creative Director Miranda Barry visited the Giant’s Causeway, an area of Northern Ireland famous for its mythic coastal beauty, she wasn’t expecting to get firsthand insight into Northern Ireland culture from a cab driver.

While driving up the coast, the driver stopped next to a field with a gigantic, spreading tree. He explained that this was a centuries-old “fairy tree,” which, according to Northern Ireland folklore, is inhabited by magical forces. The farmer had built a tall stone wall around the tree, “to protect the fairies from the wind when they come to dance.”

This experience was the inspiration for the Northern Ireland version of Sesame Street, which is called Sesame Tree.  

Candid answers for children’s natural questions

Hilda, Potto, and Claribelle (Sesame Tree)

The program, produced by Sixteen South and airing on BBC Northern Ireland since March 2008, is set in a ”question tree,” a hollow tree that is home to the two new Northern Ireland Muppets Potto and Hilda. Children all over Northern Ireland send their questions in to the question tree; at the beginning of each show, the question for that episode arrives through the BWM, or the “Big Whizzing Machine,” a contraption with bells and steam whistles that brings video of the children asking the question into the tree. The question of the day could be anything from “why do I have to share?” to “why do I have to wear special clothes on special days?”

After receiving the day’s question, Potto and Hilda go on an exploratory quest to uncover the answers. Potto uses his library and “monster web” inside the tree while adventurous Hilda sets off with her cell phone to locations around Northern Ireland to find children and adults who can answer the question.

The “question tree” encourages children to be open and to ask questions – even about difficult or sensitive topics. As Sesame Tree producer Veronica Wulff describes it, “There are a lot of things people don’t like to talk about, so we thought the tree would be a great icon for openness and encouraging kids to ask their questions.”

Encouraging openness and highlighting diversity

This underlying message of sharing and openness is at the heart of all the Sesame Tree live action films, which introduce children to their peers. The adventures of Hilda the Irish hare lead in to these live action films, which show the diversity of Northern Ireland from a child’s perspective.

The films show children engaged in Irish dancing and hurling, a fast-paced game in which players hit a small ball with axe-shaped sticks. One live action film shows children playing Double Dutch in an inner-city Protestant neighborhood, and another shows a young boy practicing his drum to play in an Orange March parade. But not all the films highlight sectarian groups. There’s a “traveler” child who lives in a trailer, a disabled boy who goes to the park with his Dad to feed the ducks, and a beautiful piece about children from two schools joining up to clean a beach.

“By doing this, we’re allowing kids to see one another and get to know each other. We’re not preaching at them, what we’re saying is, ‘these are some people in Northern Ireland,’” Wulff explains.

The films also directly address children’s questions about the differences between groups of people, as Northern Ireland’s Polish, Indian, and Chinese populations, among others, are growing rapidly and experiencing some prejudice. Sesame Tree approaches children’s curiosity head-on; one example of such a live action film shows an Irish-Nigerian boy learning to speak Irish Gaelic in an Irish-language school.

“From a child’s eye view, it’s assuming there’s nothing wrong with [asking questions]; it’s just curiosity. And that’s the attitude change that we’re looking for,” says Barry.

A set that reflects a climate of cooperation and sharing

The Sesame Tree set also reflects the country’s blossoming understanding and cooperation. In a country that has long been divided into Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, with “peace walls” erected between the two to ensure calm, it was especially important that the set symbolize the new atmosphere of openness.

“We wanted there to be a common area where the characters would meet and their spaces would cross over,” says Wulff.

One Sesame Tree storyline shows Potto and Hilda becoming upset about the need to share their space, and focuses on another of the show’s focal points: problem solving. The two characters divide their room with tape, but quickly realize that they each have belongings on the other person’s side of the room. They have to allow each other to cross into each other’s space. On one such trip across the room, Hilda tells Potto some news that she’s heard, and the two realize how good it makes them feel to share with each other. That’s the end of the divided room.

It’s an apt metaphor, and Barry, Wulff, and the rest of the team are excited to be working in Northern Ireland as a new era dawns. 

“Sesame Tree expresses this wonderful optimism that exists in Northern Ireland as it’s facing its future,” Barry says. Sesame Workshop is happy and proud to be there to share it.

Funding Partners
The American Ireland Fund
International Fund for Ireland
Northern Ireland Fund for Reconciliation
Northern Ireland Screen

Production Partners
Sixteen South

Broadcasters
BBC Northern Ireland