Families Under Pressure

The series

What started out as a small series of animations to help struggling families in the UK turned into a platform which helped millions of parents around the world.

Made in the height of lockdown, Families Under Pressure was a series of twelve short films providing much-needed advice to help parents and children deal with the struggles of family life during the pandemic.

NHS approved

We turned decades of extensive research from King’s College and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust into bite-size chunks, with playful animations and humorous scripts, making them empathetic and relatable.

The execution

We needed to make something that would help parents at that very moment, right in the middle of the first lockdown. With no filming possible, we decided to use animation and the voices of famous parents, all made and recorded remotely, to create a series that was ready in five weeks start to finish.

Produced entirely over Zoom, Facetime and good old fashioned phone calls, FUP was the result of passionate people putting something together for the greater good. We couldn’t be prouder of what we all achieved in that short space of time.

The Impact

The films went out in May 2020 and were featured on Sky News, ITV and made free on the BBC Bitesize and All4. Following the film's success in the UK, the series was remade for Germany and Australia, where it went outdoor, on national television and cinema. The impact was truly global.

The cherry on the cake was having FUP included in the V&A’s exhibition 'Now Accepting Contactless: Design in a global pandemic’.