FareShare: Strengthening Communities Through Food

Project background

We worked with Fareshare to create an animation highlighting the key issues surrounding food insecurity and food waste, and a call to action for the viewer to get involved and support in myriad ways, such as volunteering or donating food.

Animation aims

The explainer animation aims to offer greater insight into the charity’s most well-known work – supporting and feeding over a million people and reducing the impact of food waste.

The animation also aims to shine a spotlight on how FareShare’s ‘focus on food’ has other positive, lesser-known impacts, such as reducing financial strain, employment support, combating loneliness and encouraging the people they support to have a more balanced diet.

Writing the script

The facts and figures supplied by Fareshare served as a brilliant foundation upon which to base our script. Statistics such as ‘over thirteen million people will struggle to get the food they need’ and ‘nineteen million meals worth of good food were thrown away for no good reason’ instantly grab the viewers’ attention, encouraging them to question how and why these things are happening in our society, and more importantly how they can help.

Creating the animation

It also felt important to both us at CC Animation Studio and the team at Fareshare that the animation had a relatable feel, where the viewer could see how individual people can be impacted by food insecurity. Sometimes, the individual can become lost in staggering figures such as those mentioned above. From these thoughts and ideas, the concept of basing the animation's visuals around a household’s fridge was born.

We were able to showcase real-life situations, such as an empty fridge, using it as a vessel for presenting facts, figures, and information in an approachable and engaging way, with ‘fridge magnet’ style fonts, children’s drawings, and illustrated family photos.

This balance of presenting such huge numbers combined with the focus on the individual creates a well-rounded view of the impacts of food poverty at both individual and nationwide levels.

Colour also played a key role in setting the mood of the animation. Much of the subject matter at the beginning of the film is sombre and sad, so our artist and the editing team worked together to create an appropriate colour palette that reflected the mood while staying within Fareshare’s brand guidelines. A palette that gradually became brighter and bolder as the animation went on, reflecting how Fareshare’s impact on people’s lives brings positive, long-lasting solutions for the people to whom they offer support.