The brief
Art changes lives
Arts and creativity changes lives; it’s indisputable. Whether it helps someone find who they are, builds confidence or improves education, arts and creativity is central to our human experience. The impact it has on our life is almost universally positive and it’s especially relevant for our young people.
That being said, not all young people are getting the opportunity to access arts and creativity. The best way to reach them is through education settings because of their desire to help young people and the unparalleled access to them. However, with educational budgets being so heavily reduced, the decision to focus on creative activities rather than core academic subjects can be a difficult one. Artswork wanted to make this decision easier and they asked us to help.
They asked us to create an animation that was specifically tailored to address the concerns of decision makers in educational settings. The film had to strike a balance between laying out the facts and engaging this audience in a story that would compel them to potentially change their behaviour. This audience has a very specific set of needs and concerns and the film had to fit in with these.
What we did
When the brief came our way we were instantly excited and full of ideas. Here was a brief that not only spoke to something that we all truly believe in, but perfectly aligned with our social goals. Our minds were racing, but we focused on one idea in particular. The brief was for one film, but our idea centred around creating a suite of assets without the need for upping the project budget.
Our plan was pretty simple; we would help Artswork to essentially create a funnel. A way of opening up conversations about creative provision in schools, building this into something concrete and keeping this decision at the forefront of decision makers’ minds. This meant creating a short film (not unlike a trailer) and initial PDF that sold the benefits of arts and creativity, a hero film that could be showed in meetings with decision makers and a post-meeting PDF that solidified the points raised in this meeting. This was essentially a process that Artswork could follow in order to help decision makers come to the conclusion that arts and creative activities were essential for their settings.
In order to make the decision as easy for Artswork as possible we set about developing a story plan and creating custom stylesheets. These helped us work with Artswork to define the direction we were headed in and to start working on the project in earnest. What followed was a process of story development, design, illustration and animation that culminated in the suite that we had proposed. All of this fed into a wider story that could speak to decision makers and make a compelling case for arts and creativity in education settings.
The technical
Strategy
Concept development
Schedules and timelines
Style development and stylesheets
Draft layouts
Asset creation
Animation
Sound design
Music licensing
Voiceover
Short cut
PDF creation
Kind words
The result
Making the decision easy
What we produced ended up being 2 pdfs and 2 animations that can be used in a clearly defined process to connect with decision makers in education settings. Our design and animation team really pulled it out the bag with this one (not an intentional brag) and created assets that balanced human storytelling with data driven insight. This is a project that we’re so proud to have been part of!
