The Cultural Spring - one of Arts Council England's Creative People and Places projects which aims to increase participation in arts and culture within Sunderland and South Tyneside – asked if I would be interested in working with a Mental health Charity to create a short, animated film about mental health.
The deadline was tight - four workshops over four weeks and a three to six minute professionally made animated film created from scratch with people I’d never met before, plus a one minute trailer - to be delivered in 3 months (with the Christmas break in the middle). No pressure!
The Workshops
The workshops introduced the service-users to how we go about creating an animated film – the script, visual concepts, storyboarding, music and sound effects, choosing a voice artist, and creating an animatic (the prototype for the final animation). They engaged and contributed at every stage of the process. We started off with about 4 people in the first session and by the fourth and final workshop word had got around, and we had 10 people suggesting scenes, words, stories and imagery – some of which wouldn’t have occurred to me if I’d been working alone. I think everyone is a film director, deep down.
I am extremely proud of the final film. I usually work alone on animated projects, so it was a revelation to me that collaboration at the writing and concept stage with people who had no prior exposure with animation could work as effectively as it did. The final film, Any one of us, was embraced by the charity, Sunderland Headlight, and by the service-users who helped to create it.
The Final Film
Massive thanks to Emma Biggins at The Cultural Spring and Beth Miller at Sunderland Headlight for their support and faith in me during this project. And to my old performance pals, Matthew Reed and Martin Douglas for their voice work and sound recording, respectively. More of these projects, please. They are massively important to the community and a reminder that the arts really can help and save lives.
"Scott was welcomed to Headlight by our service users because he was understanding and empathetic in his work. He provided the safe space for service users to talk about their Mental Health journey. It's been great working with Scott on this project, seeing the creativity unfold over the workshops has been nothing short of inspirational."
Beth Miller, Sunderland Headlight
"Scott was so down to earth whilst he delivered his groups at Headlight. My impression was that Scott was understanding. He explained things to us in a way that I could understand, it was as if he spoke my language and understood about Mental Health. When I attended the sessions to make the animation, I found Scott’s company really calming and he gave us time to speak. It would be a pleasure to work with Scott again in the future"
Derrick, Service-user