Judge's comments:

Really exciting and innovative solution to this category. We love the way they combine the physical and digital elements, and how the physical book reminds you to open the app, engages you, and brings enjoyment to education.

Description:

NIDA is known for their acting courses, both within and outside of the entertainment industry. But despite its reputation, most people have only a basic understanding of acting as a skill, which is fundamentally about empathy and authenticity. Two crucial abilities in the modern world.

When we examined the rest of NIDA’s dramatic arts training, we uncovered invaluable insights from various disciplines, including screenwriting, stage design, and directing. Skills that, for many years, have been reserved only for the dramatic arts community.

So we wanted to tell the world what industry professionals have always known: that the methods used to teach actors how to understand the characters they play, are the perfect tools to teach people about themselves, and others.

We decided to speak to the future generation of professionals: Younger millennials and Gen Zs. Making up a third of the Australian workforce by 2030, businesses need to cater to how they like to work, learn, and lead in a newly hybrid workplace.

To truly make an impact on a discerning generation, we needed to be different in our form and offering. We found that when it comes to self-help and professional development, books were the fastest-growing medium, while apps accounted for the largest market share in e-platforms. That was the key: these digital natives didn’t always prefer digital-first.

So, we put forward a product that allows them to learn the way they live: a multi-platform experience consisting of a book, card games, and app, supplemented with audio guides and short films to support their learning.

Introducing: Prologue by NIDA.

This form factor was directly inspired by NIDA’s in-person courses, which have a tangible sense of creativity and possibility and are highly difficult to capture outside of the classroom. A multi-platform course gives us the opportunity to unleash something we call ‘the NIDA feeling’.

The idea was to write the book first-person, with an easy-to-read, self-aware, and witty tone of voice. Someone they can genuinely enjoy learning from. This persona then extends beyond the pages; narrating each video and audio guide so they can develop a relationship with the character from start to finish.

Even the box itself is designed to remain a part of their space long after they've completed the course — a centrepiece they can display and a reminder of the lessons they've learned.

The first course, Act Natural, uses the foundation of acting training to help you craft a persona that suits any room — and anyone. This groundbreaking course takes the core of the NIDA classroom experience and reimagines it as self-directed learning they can do anywhere. Learning from the media habits of Gen Zs and early Millennials, the hands-on and platform-jumping lessons are carefully crafted to deliver hard-to-teach lessons, to a hard-to-reach audience.