Films and podcasts

‘Welcome to Squirrels’, Scouts, Feb 2022

After launching Scouts’ first new age group for 36 years, Squirrels (you can read more about the work under Brand and tone of voice), we realised we needed an introductory video.

Like the iconic Disneyworld video, this would explain what Squirrels was and help ease anxious children’s or parent’s minds by letting them know what to expect. It would also help drum up excitement for those already looking forward to it!

I wrote a script and produced the film in collaboration with Young animation studio. It uses a range of techniques including claymation and finger puppets, and is due to publish on social media in May 2022.

‘Good for You’, Scouts, Oct 2021

Good for You is an ongoing campaign which puts the personal benefits of volunteering with Scouts front and centre. You can learn more about the campaign strategy and its results on the Campaigns page.

This film was made in collaboration with award-winning production company, 3angrymen. In line with the strategy and inspired by the nation’s love of Gogglebox, I wanted to reflect the incredibly diversity of Scouts volunteers. By casting people of all different ages, genders, ethnicities and backgrounds from across the UK, I hoped that everyone could find a leader they could relate to. I also wanted to create a warm, authentic and funny feel – there’s a perception that Scouts is strict and formal, so it was important not to have scripts but to ask people to speak honestly about why they love volunteering with Scouts. Having great conversations and asking the right questions was key.

The logistics of this film were a real challenge. It was important that we represented our volunteers in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales (including some Welsh language), but we had a limited budget. We found two groups in each country that were close enough so we could film both in one day (even if this meant running from North West London to South East London in a rainstorm, or from Edinburgh to Glasgow in an afternoon!). We did all of our pre-film meetings via Zoom so we could chemistry test and prepare volunteers without running up additional costs, and we kept the crew small – this also helped the volunteers to relax. Each of the interviews included questions that covered multiple content opportunities, so we also ended up with 13 hours of footage – we’ll be able to edit this into other #GoodForYou films in the future. A January campaign around developing new skills and making new friends, for example, is planned.

As a final touch, we asked animator Geth Vaughan and illustrator Joanna Muñoz to work together on animated overlays. These add extra humour to the film and tie in with the look of the Good for You campaign.

The response to the film has been hugely positive. So far, over 3,000 volunteers have joined Scouts through #GoodForYou.

‘Life-changing awards’, Scouts X DofE, Dec 2020

This film was commissioned in partnership with the Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) Awards to encourage Explorer Scouts and other young people aged 14– 18 to start their DofE Awards and/or Scouts top awards. It was made in collaboration with production studio 3angrymen.

We targeted this on Facebook to an audience of Explorer leaders, young leaders and network roles, a total audience size of about ~15,000. It reached just under 8,500 people and had 5,440 video views, giving a video view rate of 67%. Overall, the video has a brilliant overall completion rate of 22%, compared to 5% for most Scouts videos.

The film was a finalist in the Education and Training category at the EVCOM Clarion Awards 2021.

‘The Scouts Podcast: ep 2’, Scouts, Feb 2021

As with episode 1(below), I led on this project in collaboration with production company Media Cage.

This episode focused on the question, ‘How can we stand up for LGBTQ+ rights?’ and to answer it was Reeta Loi: music artist, Forbes 100 Founder and CEO of Gaysians, contributing editor at Gay Times, and documentary reporter at VICE. Reeta talked about what LGBTQ+ actually means, how she found strength and support in the LGBTQ+ community after being rejected by her Indian family for being a lesbian, and how to fight for your rights and the rights of others. She also touched on how to avoid ‘performativism’ when being an LGBTQ+ ally and how to stay connected to your culture even when you lose important links – like friends and family – to it.

The episode had an average listening time of 25 minutes 4 seconds, so most people listened until nearly the end (length was 31 minutes).

‘Even apart, we’re together’, Scouts, Dec 2020

Produced in collaboration with French film studio Temple Caché and directed by Gwendoline Gamboa, ‘Even apart, we’re together’ was a beautifully bright testament to the power of togetherness, positivity and resilience, even in the face of a global pandemic. The film gave a peek into a diverse array of Scouts young people and volunteers as they Zoomed with nursing home residents, turned a Christmas angel into inspirational astronaut Major Tim Peake, and camped in gardens, bathtubs and under kitchen tables.

The film’s playful, Christmassy and irresistibly ear worm-y music was composed by Geth Vaughan, founder and director of Young Studio.

It reached 39,000 people on Facebook and had an engagement rate of 13%.

‘The Scouts Podcast: ep 1’, Scouts, Oct 2020

I led on the development of Scouts’ first podcast in collaboration with production company Media Cage. Coming up with the concept, casting two young hosts (Maya Egbo and Gabriel Dedji), and identifying and securing guests, my first foray into the format taught me a lot.

Our first episode was in response to the difficult first year under COVID-19 and focused on the question, ‘What effect has lockdown had on young people’s mental health?’ To answer it was mental health activist, Natasha Devon MBE. She gave brilliant advice on how we can all protect our mental wellbeing in and out of periods of lockdown, discussed her love of (ex-Scout) David Bowie and how music has helped her mental health, and lots more.

The episode went into the top 50% of podcasts for listeners and had an average listening time of 31 minutes 40 seconds (it was 33 minutes long including outro music).

‘Scouts made me’, Scouts, Sept 2020

Starring most of Scouts’ celebrity Ambassadors including Bear Grylls, Steve Backshall, Ellie Simmonds and Helen Glover, ’Scouts made me’ was commissioned for Scouts’ 2020 AGM.

Working with production company 3angrymen, we came up with a script for each individual Ambassador detailing their amazing life journeys and how Scouts made them who they are today. The final film took elements from each of these, building to show the huge range of skills and values that Scouts helps people to develop. My work on this included script editing beforehand and acting as script doctor on the shoot.

The film made 568,688 impressions and had over 20,000 engagements, with a completion rate of 22% compared to our average of 5%. On Twitter alone, the post made 129,482 impressions compared to an average of 11,000. It won Gold at the Charity Film Awards 2022 and was a finalist in the Brand Communication category at the EVCOM Clarion Awards 2021.

‘Say what you see’, Scouts, June 2020

At the beginning of 2019, Scouts started building a free database of digital activities for volunteers, parents/carers, and young people. Eighteen months on, nearly 1,000 activities have been delivered to agile sprints, with the Creative team being responsible for re-writing the activities in Scouts’ tone of voice and delivering media assets to accompany them. These assets couldn’t be purely decorational; they needed to help everyone understand the activity while also being entertaining (but not irritating – as adults might have to watch the videos multiple times!). They also had to work on social.

After consuming vast amounts of YouTube videos, we put together an in-depth outline of what we wanted to do.

This project was a close collaboration and involved travelling between Manchester and Cheshire to work with Follow Films and Young animation studio. We were committed to casting a diverse range of young people for the project (including those with differing abilities to show how activities could be adapted to be more inclusive), and wanted to maintain a balance between high quality, professional content and making the activities feel fun, informal, and easy to copy. With Follow Films, we produced 17 presenter-led videos and 14 tabletop how-to videos. With Young, we created a cast of characters and a world for them to live in, and overlaid the real-world videos with them to add greater clarity and colour. We also created 36 animated gifs and a whopping 320 illustrated scenes. All of this was to budget and to deadline.

These activities have exceeded expectations. Those with media assets have attracted 840,000 page views (around 33% more than those without assets) so far from 565,000 users, with 300,000 people returning repeatedly. Senior staff and volunteers on the project board fed back that the films delivered ‘above and beyond our wildest dreams’. The illustrations and animations were also Highly Recommended in the Design Week Awards 2020.

‘All our shining lights’, Scouts, Dec 2019

Every year, the main aim of Scouts’ end of year video is to thank members, and make them feel warm and fuzzy inside. For this film, I also wanted to showcase the great skill-sharing that goes on at Scouts, so non-members could see what the fuss is about too.

First, I teamed up with Creative Producer Aimee-lee Abraham to develop a narrative. For a filmmaker, we were immediately drawn to Rachael Olga Lloyd. Her style is cosy and nostalgic – evocative of classic Oliver Postgate productions like Bagpuss and The Clangers, which many of our volunteers would remember fondly from their childhoods – but at the same time, beautifully stripped back and contemporary, making it a perfect match for us as a brand keen to honour our 100+ years of history while looking firmly towards the future.

The challenge with puppetry and stop motion is that they require a lot of time and skill, which also means they can be expensive. We had a limited budget, so worked with Rachael to come up with a solution – rod puppets. Unfortunately, the limited range of movement of the rod puppets meant the narrative we’d developed was difficult to convey. We stripped the story right back and focused in on details like facial expressions – ultimately, this led to a simpler, more focused film.

I like to think we succeeded in making something which feels warm and familiar, but also a little unexpected. The film gives a knowing nod to the things Scouts are most well-known for – like night hikes – but it’s also a showcase of how we’ve moved on, highlighting both the diversity of the movement itself and the huge range of skills we offer.

Reactions from everyone were fantastic, and we had over 75,000 views on Facebook and YouTube. We also doubled engagement from the previous year’s end of year film.

‘The science behind early years’, Scouts, March 2019

In Spring 2019, Scouts started a pilot programme for four and five year olds. To explain to members why we were doing this, a volunteer on the project wrote a paper on the scientific evidence behind early intervention. We wanted to get this information across in an easy to understand way, so I took the challenge of condensing and simplifying the paper into a script and worked with Young to turn it into this short animation. It ended up being one of my favourite pieces of work – not least because of the incredible original music that Young added and the work of the talented young voiceover artist, a local Scout.