Social Care Future

'We all want to live in the place we call home...'

Loved making this film for Social Care Future, which tells the important story of social care and its importance to all of our lives. We co-wrote the script with Neil Crowther, which was voiced by the amazing and lovely actor, disability campaigner and activist Liz Carr (Silent Witness, Loki, Good Omens). Animated by regular partner in crime Phil Davies at Battlecat Studios, and all sound kindly done by Gramercy Park Studios.

The Social Care Future team got in touch in late 2022 with an exciting but challenging brief. They’d built a vibrant community of passionate individuals and organisations that believed there is a bright and positive vision for social care that isn’t currently being told. It was essential to tell this story though, so the public knew how important it was to support and protect social care as a concept, as we’ll all interact with social care at some point in our lives. Rather than echo the negative and complex framing that permeates much of the public-facing material, Social Care Future wanted to tell the positive stories that exist and excite but don’t reach the public.

We all wanted to create a powerful and impassioned piece that communicated the core message ‘We all want to live in a place we call home, with the things and the people that we love’. This messaging had been created and rigorously tested with focus groups, as had a bank of other key messaging and framing. We needed to take this evidence-based, intentionally framed vision and adapt and dramatize it into a powerful piece of narrative storytelling.

We started by talking through what was essential that the viewer learnt – that social care was for everyone, that it is transcended race, age, ethnicity and class, that it was an enabler of life and living, that it was not just essential to many – but crucial to all. At its heart social care is a beautiful, caring, community focused support network. It lives within so many of our shared societal stories, experiences and relationships, but is somehow mired and hidden by decades of negative framing and grim coverage. It needed a makeover!