“Catherine empowered the Ambassadors to use their voice by designing and delivering a workshop to help them understand the power of spoken word and videography. She then supported them to co-create the script and travelled across the country to do the filming, in locations that meant something to them. The Ambassadors had an absolutely incredible experience and learnt a lot along the way too – such as techniques on how to effectively deliver their lines, the pace and tone of their voice and body language too! Catherine was extremely flexible in her approach and the creativity of the shots was just incredible. Catherine went the extra mile by capturing photos and bonus content, which we have used on our social media channels.

The quality of the final piece ‘This is Our Voice’ is exceptional and has played an integral part in our promotion of the Programme across our internal and external stakeholders.

Thank you for all of your hard work Catherine!”

— Ash Williams, UK Youth Ambassador Project Manager, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award

The brief: to create a film with the first cohort of national youth ambassadors to both celebrate their achievements, and to support recruitment of the next group of ambassadors. 

The creative: a co-created spoken word film featuring 12 ambassadors from across the UK.  In order to script the piece I designed and ran a scripting workshop for the group and then worked with each individual to set-up a shoot that reflected their passions and their own DofE journey.

I set up a complex 2000 mile, two week road-trip to shoot the content.  In order to maximise the value of spending time with each young person I captured photography of the ambassadors and case study interviews and filming. This culminated in 11 filmed interviews, as well as photography and B-roll gathered of 14 activities.

The outputs: we filmed two varying scripts - one for the celebration film which was launched on the first anniversary of the Duke’s passing - to time with the memorial service, and a second, which was used for the national recruitment campaign for the second year of the programme.

The impact: The celebration film was broadcast on the BBC throughout the coverage of the Duke’s memorial service, along with interviews from some of the young people featured across TV and radio. In addition it ran on social media channels with huge success and engagement. Both films continue to be used to engage a range of stakeholders including high value fundraising relationships at events including the recent Gold Award Celebrations held at Buckingham Palace.

This project has been the most ambitious co-creation film project by DofE so far and was a huge success in putting young people at the heart of content creation. The process was incredibly positive for the ambassadors and is resonating with a variety of audiences as a result.