Project Description

Staffordshire charity appeals to the local community to raise funds for dementia-friendly garden

Approach Dementia Support is a Staffordshire charity, which works with people affected by dementia within Stoke-on-Trent and the surrounding areas.

In 2022, they teamed up with St. Edward’s school in Leek to create a dementia-friendly garden, which both the pupils and people affected by dementia could use.

The plan was also for the produce grown at the garden to be donated to local foodbanks.

With such an empowering message, they decided to appeal to the local community to help with crowdfunding the funds for the project – and that’s how VideoHQ got involved.

 

What was the filming process like

Approach Dementia Support wanted a fundraising video which summarised the aims of the campaign, why people should donate, and how people could help.

To produce this video, I did two different filming days: one at the school in Leek; and another at an example dementia-friendly garden at the Donna Louise Hospice in Trentham.

At the first filming session, I conducted multiple interviews at different locations across the school site, to keep the video visually interesting throughout.

Photo of the sign at St Edward's School in Leek

All the interviewees offered a different perspective about the project. For example, people living with dementia talked about how good the gardening would be as an activity. Meanwhile, the deputy headteacher of the school talked about how the project would be enriching for the pupils.

Showcasing different messages like this allows the project to resonate with a wider variety of people, leading to more donations.

The interviews took around ten minutes each. As a trained journalist, I’m able to meet someone new and immediately put them at ease during the interview, while asking relevant questions which I know will tie into the broader narrative of the video.

The second filming session in Trentham was primarily to record an interview with project co-ordinator Louise Eagles, whilst also getting footage of an example garden, to better illustrate the aims of the project.

 

What was the editing process like

I used the interview with Louise Eagles as the main skeleton of the video, which was recorded on two cameras, allowing me to cut between them and keep the video visually interesting throughout.

Photo of Louise Eagle from the Staffordshire charity Approach Dementia Support

The other interviews were then cut down into their most interesting snippets, while making sure everyone had something different to say to each other.

Cutaways filmed at the school and hospice were added to the video to illustrate the points of the interviewees.

 

How was the video used

The main home for the video was on the main page of the Crowdfunder campaign, so it was the first thing people saw when they followed the link to find out more about donating.

Clips from the video were used on social media to maintain interest during the campaign, which ran for a number of weeks.

Finally, footage from the video even made it onto BBC Midlands Today (definitely a mini-career highlight for me!) when they did a news story about the video.