Putting Children 1st

Children 1st is Scotland’s National Children’s Charity which works with children, young people and their families to uphold and progress their rights, and also to strengthen and improve the systems that are there to support them. We have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Children 1st across several video projects over the last few years.

This amazing organisation works very hard to ensure that a child's best interests are at the heart of any Children's Hearing, or related court proceeding, and we are proud to have been able to help make this process less daunting for the young people they represent.

The court process can be a very confusing time for young people, so they are appointed an adult who is there to support them, this person is called a “safeguarder”. For this project, the charity wanted to produce a video that shows young people exactly what their safeguarder would do to make them feel confident, supported and heard.

Considering the video’s audience, it was decided that animation would be the best format for the project. As a result, we were commissioned to create an animated explainer video to engage with children and young people, in an approachable and easy way to help them feel confident about the safeguarders’ role during their court case.

Firstly we worked with the Children 1st team to clarify exactly what their message was, bringing together the vast amount of important information involved around the subject into a concise script that could be delivered in a way that would be heard and understood by young people.

We then developed a character and an animation style that children could identify with, and then created a storyboard to plan out the key points of the message - the storyboarding process is a great way to streamline the content, ensuring it’s concise, covers all the relevant points and has just the right look and feel.

Next up, we moved on to the animation stage, before working with a young actor to record the voice-over, bringing the Children 1st character to life:-

This video is now shown to children who find themselves in this situation, to reassure them of what to expect of a safeguarder, and is also used on the Children 1st Website. Assets from the animation are used across the accompanying literature and the Children 1st website to provide a consistent style and messaging.

If your organisation is not sure of the best way to get a message across to a specific, varied or multiple audiences, get in touch and we can guide you through the choices available.

Sometimes you just need to think outside the box.