THE MUSEUM LIFE OF PESTS

Earlier this year we were thrilled to learn that after pitching against 31 other companies, we had been awarded the contract to produce a short film for South West Museum Development for their Pest Partners project.

Due to the COVID pandemic, in late March 2020 all museums were instructed to close to the public, leaving no, or limited staff in attendance during the early months of the lock down. Unfortunately, this coincided with the peak period of pest activity which left many museum collections vulnerable to spreading infestations.

With funding from Historic England, SWMD created the Pest Partners project to help museums trap, track and identify pest activity and manage infestations. The Art Fund awarded a grant to allow Pest Partners to develop an animation to convey the importance of pest management as a holistic and shared responsibility and that spotting pest activity and taking action is the first step to mitigating damage.

Working closely with SWMD Conservation Development Officer Helena Jaeschke, we had great fun developing the script and visualising how we would bring the pest characters to life, whilst getting the all-important messages across clearly to the Museum employees and volunteers.

This was one of our favourite projects to work on and we're very proud to have been a tiny part of protecting the wonderful collections in our museums.

CREDITS

Animation Direction – Claire Grey

Design – Devon Short

Animation – Claire Grey / Devon Short/ Pypah Santos

Composition – Cheryl Parker

Voice artist – Ritchie Clarke