Animation Station

Sharing STARTwork at the COT Annual Conference in Birmingham.

On 19th June, we joined hundreds of Occupational Therapists at their annual conference. We invited a group of OTs to take part in a mini session from the STARTwork project, to share how the creative arts can benefit mental health and recovery, including the beginning of going back to work.

The original course was 12 weeks long but we only had an hour to give the OTs an understanding of how it worked. So, I asked the OTs to use the original storyboards and theme from the first cohort of STARTwork. Thus, the group made two films showing a flower blooming, to signify the changes and gradual growth of mental health recovery and the steps the project members took towards gaining employment.

The group split into two- Bloomin' Marvellous and Flower Power.

To make the film, each team had to make a flower in different stages of bloom; each stage would then be captured in one frame. The animation would consist of 5 frames- one for each stage. After some excellent coordination and communication, each team created 5 paper flowers. We then used a free app called iMotion to take photos of each flower and create a stop motion animation, which you can see below!

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