Live, laugh, learn
The brief
U3a is a UK-wide, volunteer led charity movement that brings people together in retirement through learning activities, sharing skills and interests and building friendships.
Their communications team asked us to produce a short, animated film that clearly explains how u3a works and how joining can help newly retired people regain a sense of purpose and community. The film needed to clear, welcoming and flexible for U3a to use in presentations, on social channels and on their website.
Client
U3a
Industry
Charity / Not for Profit
Professional services
What We Did
- Animation
- Brand development
- Copywriting
- Creative strategy
- Digital assets
- Motion design
- Storyboarding
- Voiceover production
Project film
The Creative Content
Early conversations with U3a revealed that the film needed to reflect the experience of transitioning into retirement. For many people, this brings a sudden loss of the everyday community and connection found through work. Our creative approach therefore focused on showing how U3a offers a new sense of belonging at this stage of life, a place to reconnect with others, feel part of something again and build meaningful relationships.
While U3a is an organisation centred on learning, we framed learning as something that naturally grows out of community and connection. The film reflected U3a’s mutual aid ethos, showing that there is no distinction between teachers and learners. Instead, everyone has something to contribute, whether that’s leading a group, sharing a skill or simply taking part.
Through storyboarding, we mapped a clear emotional journey, from the first day of retirement, exciting, dauting and sometimes a little lonely, to finding your people at U3a through living, laughing and learning, and becoming part of a wider movement.
Visually, we developed a friendly character set built from geometric shapes and a primary colour palette. This allowed us to represent diversity without leaning on stereotypes and created a playful, fun animation.
Finally, we cast a warm, upbeat Northern voiceover artist to bring the animation’s tone to life and added a sound mix that matched the optimistic rhythm of the film.
The impact
In the end we delivered a high-quality asset to work effectively as an opening film for U3a town-hall and community group presentations to clearly establish who they are and what they offer.
The film will work well on U3a’s digital channels to support wider awareness of the movement. By clearly communicating the sense of community, mutual-aid ethos and benefits of involvement, it also provides local U3as with an effective way to introduce membership and support recruitment within their communities.
The finished animation was well received by the U3a team.
What we enjoyed about the project
This was a fun character-led animation and despite the simple design, the characters had real personality and were exciting to animate and bring to life. The script gave us license to be playful, creating entertaining scenarios, like the art class scene and pickleball battle. Overall, it was an enjoyable and rewarding project to work on from start to finish.