Three of my grandchildren enjoy analogue photography with me. But it definitely isn't scanning and printing on the printer that they like. The absolutely love being able to go into the darkroom with their negatives and make and develop analogue prints. The magic of seeing the print begin to appear on the paper under the red light is what captured every one of them. If they want to take a picture and send it to a friend, or print it on a printer, they just use their phone. Everyone can do that. But not everyone can bring their very own black and white print to school to show off.
EDIT - In fact, one of them has already moved to a 6x6 folder because they like the prints better.
And Ilford's paper is terrific.
I've told this story before, but when my son was in the 8th grade I was approached by the faculty at his school about teaching a little photo class to a few of the students as a consolation gift. They were the ones who hadn't made it into the annual school play.
So we made pinhole cameras from unused one-gallon paint cans. We used Ilford paper for the negatives and Ilford paper for the contact positives. I turned the women's faculty restroom into a red-light darkroom with a hanging white bulb, set out trays and washer and timer, the whole nine yards. Had a sturdy DIY paint can tripod adapter, exposure charts, and a stopwatch for the black electrical tape shutters.
The kids loved it. And mind you these were 7th and 8th grade kids who had just begun learning that all adults must always be avoided at all costs.
About a week later I was at the school for some reason and one of the faculty members pulled me aside and told me she had watched as one of the girls from the class had spent that entire week walking around the playground and shoving her hands in the other kids faces.
A little additional investigation had determined that the girl was actually asking the other kids to smell her hands. I had told her after the class ended that the smell of fixer on her hands meant that she had taken her rightful place in a very long line of traditional darkroom photographers stretching back 178 years.
Apparently she hadn't washed her hands during the entire following week...
Ken
[Edit: I just looked and the very simple webpage I made for this class is still available
here. It shows the student's final photographs from two sessions. Kirsten was the young lady with the fixer hands. Wow, has it already been almost ten years?]
