'Creature Discomforts' Highlights Disability Awareness

Leonard Cheshire Disability has teamed up with Aardman Animations to create a highly original campaign called 'Creature Discomforts' with Rushes working on the post-production for the television and online adverts.
The awareness campaign is based on the much loved Creature Comforts series but features the hallmark plasticine characters with disabilities, combined with the real voices and experiences of disabled people.
The Aardman team has created new characters for the campaign including a bull terrier in a wheelchair, a stick insect with a walking stick and a tortoise on crutches.
The campaign highlights the disadvantage and discrimination that disabled people experience every day, largely as a result of the ignorance of the wider population. The animations are based on the genuine voices of disabled people describing in their own words the negative attitudes and barriers they experience which separate them from society.
Bryan Dutton, Director General, Leonard Cheshire Disability said: “We want people to change the way they see disability, to think and act differently and to make a positive difference to the lives of disabled people.
“Creature Comforts is well known and much-loved for its ability to bring home messages in a simple, everyday way. Our Creature Discomforts campaign builds on this, making a serious point with humour.”
Steve Harding-Hill, the director of Creature Discomforts at Aardman Animations said: “Leonard Cheshire Disability’s new campaign is an important step towards changing everyone’s attitudes to disability. Working on it has been an amazing experience for us all at Aardman. Taking the real voices and experiences of disabled people and creating animated stories that are informative, entertaining and poignant has been an immense but incredibly satisfying challenge.”
The animations can be seen at www.CreatureDiscomforts.org, with an online video of the ‘making of’ the campaign going live onThursday November 29.
The characters are currently appearing in adverts at bus stops, in newspapers, magazines and online. In January, the animations will be aired on ITV.
(SP)