School children engage in animation challenge to make recycling fun
Company: Cambridge County Council
Location: Cambridgeshire
Sector: Public Sector
Problem:
Parents and carers are responsible for recycling at home and at school. Generally children are not aware or involved in recycling or could get more involved. It is important that the next generation understand the positive impact and value of recycling now and into the future.
Goal:
To educate young people in a fun and engaging way about the impact of recycling on the environment and to encourage them to get involved in recycling at home and school.
Challenges:
- With a tight turnaround and a range of stakeholders from different parts of the client’s organisation we were asked to produce a multichannel campaign that encouraged engagement by the target audience while asking them to focus on a single theme.
- The campaign was targeted at Cambridgeshire school children in years 3-5 (aged 7-10y ) and it had to inspire that demographic to take on a personal challenge over the school holidays.
- The campaign also had to target their parents/carers to encourage participation.
Campaign Goals:
- To engage age 7-10 year olds to educate them on recycling
- To demonstrate how recycled items can be reused in many ways
- Encourage children to use their creativity to make the recycling message engaging to their peers
Solution:
Breadcrumb media worked in partnership with Cambridge County Council, Amey and Recap to produce an innovative and engaging ‘Recyclables Summer Challenge’. Using the County Council summer reading challenge as a platform to connect with the audience, we devised an animation competition. The entrants were offered an opportunity to win a prize for their class as well as a truly unique prize for themselves.
A theme was chosen: Space for Change. The children were challenged to use their imagination to create a story of how a drinks can, jam jar, plastic bottle or magazine can be recycled and transformed into something new. Using a storyboard, downloaded from the website, the entrants had to bring the items to life through drawing animations, telling a story and sharing their message.
The judging panel included Pippa Goodhart, local author of children’s bestseller book You Choose, and Mark Pirrie, Director of Breadcrumb Media, who was invited by the County Council to help chose the winner, as well as three representatives from the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Waste Partnership (RECAP) and Amey.
In anticipation of the challenge Pippa Goodhart said: “This competition is a wonderful opportunity for visually creative children. Are we going to discover film makers and animators of the future? The competition’s recycling subject couldn’t be more important or relevant to children. Altogether it’s going to be a treat for me to see and be part of the judging of what they create. I very much hope I can meet the winners and share in their workshop. Exciting!”
The winning entrant would have their own story turned into a real animated video. Alongside this the winner would be invited, along with their whole class, to an animation and recycling workshop at the waste management park in Waterbeach.
Collateral produced included posters and flyers to be used by libraries and schools. We provided a social media campaign and managed stop-motions animation workshops held at council libraries the campaign. The campaign launched before the end of the summer term and ran throughout the holidays, ending in September.
In order to whet the appetite Breadcrumb Media produced this short animation:
A toolkit containing, blank storyboards and toolkits were designed by Breadcrumb Media and made available online
http://www.recap.co.uk/news/recyclables-summer-challenge-2019/
Results:
With the freedom of the holidays to get creative the children’s entries were out of this world. Twin sisters from Milton C of E Academy were the winner and runner up. Watch the Winner’s Animation here.
The Winner Poster
The feedback received by the council regarding the character assets we produced for this campaign was very positive. These assets are now being used to promote recycling on recycling lorries around the county. Watch out for these characters on a bin lorry near you!
“We really enjoyed working with Breadcrumb on the Summer Recyclable Challenge. They helped us from the start and in the development of the whole campaign. They produce two fantastic videos to help encourage residents of Cambridgeshire recycle as much as they can. As part of the campaign, children needed to create a story board about recycling and the winner got their story created into a video. In December, the winner and their whole class came to an event where there had a tour of the waste management park, learned about recycling and got to do the voiceovers for the winners video. Breadcrumb really engaged the children and made it a super fun day. The video is great and we are really happy with the result.” Maggie Pratt, Cambridgeshire County Council.
If you would like marketing and content support for your next campaign then click here to get in touch with the team.
