The Client
AKOU
AKOU is a social impact consultancy. They look at the impact of placemaking, regeneration, local services and investment. They highlight how social capital is created, and how their clients positively or negatively influence social capital and impact society via their service. Leading action-based research projects and developing tools that support citizen participation in evaluation and impact measurement. They provide the right tools and digital support to rebalance power around area development and regeneration.
Project Services
Film Production
The Brief
For one of their projects, Akou conducted research as part of TFL’s Ending Violence Against Women and Girls. Their Safer Spaces project explored what more can be done differently to keep women and girls safe and improve their confidence when traveling. Focusing on the area around Canning Town Bus Station. They communicated with local stakeholders from schools to private businesses to consult with their community of staff, students, and customers on how to make a safer space.
Akou’s research for TFL covered over 25 year olds, they wanted to reach and hear the voices of a younger audience of 18 - 25 year olds. We were commissioned to create content to target a younger audience.
We created a short documentary that follows 3 girls living in Canning Town giving insight into their area and their perspective on safety when traveling and how to make it safer for women and girls. We held a casting and shortlisted over 20 girls whom we interviewed on Zoom and recorded them all for the use of Akous research. We cast our final 3 girls from different backgrounds within the desired age range.
We put a team together to help us execute the production of the documentary. We filmed the girls' interviews in a studio then around Canning Town bus station and captured our own drone footage. On the shoot day, the catering provided and the studio used were both in the area to support local businesses.
We commissioned a spoken word artist to write a short piece and record it as the voice-over for the introduction of the documentary. Then from what we had gathered in the interviews, we broke down the documentary into 3 parts, modification, desensitisation, and change which we also cut into shorter clips to use as short-form content.