Research from the Millennium Cohort study considering the career aspirations of 7-14-year-old children highlighted a significant gender bias in the types of jobs boys and girls wanted to to in later life. Our challenge with this project was to bring the research to life for an audience with an age range of 7-11 years old and extend the impact of gender stereotypes: animals by creating a suite of learning content that could be easily deployed in schools and home across the country.
We started ‘Gender Stereotypes: Animals’ by visiting a school to speak with and film a group of children to see and hear their first hand responses. We then designed a concept that uses young animals as the main characters. This allowed us to maximise the tension between the views that children express about careers and their views on gender bias. Through the use of animals we were able to encourage the children to consider their judgements as a third person without representing children and then seeming to be critical. The animal characters also helped us to add fun and engagement.
‘Gender Stereotypes: Animals’ was narrated with character voice-over artists to increase the sense of fun and differentiation from a lesson or instructional information. The Attenborough-esque voice-over that starts the animation uses a familiar voice in conjunction with film that creates a surprising reveal early in the video to hook the audience.
To ensure the long-standing impact of the project, we designed a suite of complimentary learning content that could be easily used by teachers and to extend the learning activities to home.
The animation and learning content will be released to schools nationally throughout 2019.
Find out more about the ‘gender stereotypes: anti-fairytale’. Bringing the Millennium Cohort study’s research to life through animation and creating something both educational and engaging for an audience aged 11-14.
