Pupils help develop animated films to warn peers

Films developed by local schoolchildren to help them warn each other about road safety will be premiered at a special event in Burnley on Monday 3 March.

‘No Bones’ is a series of animated films made with the help of more than 150 pupils in the East Lancashire area, designed to tackle the topic in a lively and thought provoking way. 

Burnley currently has the highest rate of road safety-related incidents among young people in East Lancashire, and the highest number of primary school-aged pedestrian casualties in the county.

‘No Bones’ was developed as a partnership between Lancashire County Council’s road and transport safety team and Calico Creative*, a local social Enterprise, with the help of volunteers from BBC Outreach.

Calico Creative carried out research in schools and colleges across East Lancashire to discover local people’s views about road safety, which helped inform the ‘No Bones’ films.

Councillor John Fillis, Lancashire County Council, said: “By presenting the real life experiences of young people in Lancashire, No Bones delivers important messages about road safety in an engaging way which will have an impact on the way they think and behave.”

The young people were involved all aspects of the films’ production including animation, music and graphic design. This included a trip to the BBC at MediaCityUK in Salford where they learnt about scriptwriting and featured on the BBC’s renowned children’s news programme Newsround.

Jason Beaumont-Clough, 11, who was involved in designing the No Bones characters, said: “I had a lot of fun and picked up a lot of tips along the way.

“I believe that involving the children in the creation of the animation will reach out to kids of all ages, rather than just feeding them information which they are not going to take in.”

Following the premiere, the films will be made available to schools across Lancashire.

For more information contact Julian Whitley at Calico on 01282 686478.

*Footnote: Calico Creative is part of a social enterprise charity aiming to engage the community to make educational materials used by local authorities in schools and colleges.