Speakeasy was asked by the NHS Education for Scotland education and training body, NES, to create an animation to raise awareness of the prevalence and impact of trauma within the workplace. The goal was to inform practitioners and other staff how to deal sensitively with people in order to minimise the risk of distress and re-traumatisation, and highlight how traumatic experiences like sexual and domestic abuse can affect people.

Throughout the process Speakeasy worked with the client in character design, storyboarding, scripting and creation of the final 2D animation.

Given the sensitivity of the subject matter, Speakeasy opted for an expressive, emotive, hand drawn style, highly impactful whilst also being able to convey a sense of profound vulnerability, which is so fundamental to this area of work.

The use of the first-person narrative as each of the characters recounts their own personal experience of abuse allows us to hear the emotion in the characters voice and helps us to better relate to, and empathise with, the characters. The scenarios themselves clarify that anyone may have suffered trauma in the past. The 3 characters speak together with one voice to highlight the importance of standing together to help and empower one another.