Cynthia Hall and the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development

Attachment

The Scrapbook

The client

A passionate advocate for children and the co-creator of Trust-Based Relational Interventions (TBRI®), Dr Karyn Purvis also co-founded the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development at the Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth, TX. Dr Purvis dedicated her life to children who had tough starts in early life. Cynthia Hall is a producer, writer and director based in Texas experienced in creating powerful content. The Karyn Purvis Institute and Cynthia Hall saw a need to raise awareness around the implications of attachment and the relationship between children and carers, emphasising its impacts on adulthood. Working together, we created a Whiteboard Animation to deliver their messages on this important topic.

The challenge

It was essential that we created a Whiteboard Animation which was able to deliver a large amount of information. It had to speak to an audience of parents, foster parents and carers, as well as the wider public, who could find this information both useful and relevant. It also had to meet the clear vision of Cynthia Hall, the Karyn Purvis Institute and the TCU.

The film

A secure attachment base provides children with the felt safety to explore both the physical and social world. Growing from this base, children can grow into in secure adults who are able to take part in the dance with others - resilient and sensitive to their own and other's needs. This film looks at what this secure attachment looks like. The film goes on to look at children who don’t receive this, the behaviours that can manifest and the connecting principles that allow secure attachment to be built.

A smooth and steady voiceover by Psychology Professor Dr David Cross guided viewers through the many facets of attachment. In this film, information connection was key due to the amount and complexity that had to be expressed. A clear layout was essential for this and the column layout allowed us to position information in a way which flowed and built upon itself. To create a Whiteboard Animation which truly spoke to its audience our imagery and visual metaphors had to be strong and relevant. Scenes such as those showing an adult to child encounter captured real situations, while metaphors such as the avoidant child’s face masking and moving to reveal the real emotions captured the sometimes unseen element of this complex process. These elements culminated in a film which delivered a lot of information in a way viewers could take on board and take away.

The context

Find out more by visiting the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development website here. Read a blog post by Senior Creative Dan Stirrup here to find out more about how this film was made.