Media agency Bohemia has gone above and beyond its day-to-day remit, helping to create a series of powerful animations by young people with not-for-profit creative writing centre, the Sydney Story Factory.
The project, titled ‘Radio with Pictures’, saw Bohemians connect with generous individuals from right across the industry to help illustrate and produce more than 20 animations by young people from indigenous and non-English speaking backgrounds.
They also arranged for up-and-coming film-maker Audrey Svoboda’s business, Dirty Ice Cream, to document the young people’s creative process, and show the benefits of the program on their communication and collaboration skills, and self-confidence.
Bohemia was introduced to the Sydney Story Factory through industry foundation UN LTD’s MENTOR program.
The Sydney Story Factory runs a range of free creative writing and storytelling programs for marginalised young people. Under the guidance of their expert storytelling team, trained volunteer tutors work with students one-on-one to create stories of all kinds.
Bohemia and Sydney Story Factory were a perfect UN LTD MENTOR match, given Bohemia’s purpose is to create powerful voices.
Led by Pip Bingemann, a strategist at Bohemia and Alex McCullagh, Business Executive, a group of enthusiastic Bohemians put their heads together to work out how they could best support the Sydney Story Factory.
“The Sydney Story Factory told us about their Radio with Pictures concept and it sounded like a perfect match. The sole focus has been to make this fantastic project come together and bring the kids stories to life accessing professionals within our industry,” said Bingemann.
“We mobilised the Bohemia team to connect our collective network of industry contacts and we are very proud of how the project has come together – it looks brilliant”
The list of contributors from across the media, marketing and advertising industry includes: professional illustrators to re-draw the kids’ stories, Southern Cross Austereo who provided their radio studios for the kids to record the audio narration, and Audrey Svoboda’s business Dirty Icecream to record and produce a documentary of the end to end process.
Sydney Story Factory co-founder Cath Keenan said the best part was seeing the kids’ response to their stories come to life.
“The kids were completely blown away by how fantastic their ideas looked and sounded,” said Cath.
“Our programs give kids a creative outlet and develop their ability to communicate their thoughts and feelings. The Radio with Pictures project has taken this a step further and enabled them to feel a huge sense of pride in their work. That feeling of confidence is priceless for these students and is such a motivator.”
General Manager of UN LTD, Carol Morris said Bohemia had set the bar high in terms of a great case study of the UN LTD MENTOR program, “Bohemia have really smashed this one out of the park. MENTOR is all about connecting the powerful skills in our industry to make a difference. The result for Sydney Story Factory and the work these guys have done to impact the kids directly is so valuable,” said Carol.
Radio with Pictures includes stories by children from Lurnea High School, Alexandria Park Community School, Weave’s Kool Kids and students from the Yurungai Learning Centre by Barnardos.
