My Life Now

About the project

A child’s mental health, social behaviour and educational prospects can all be impacted by having a parent in jail.

This project was inspired by a conversation between a young man, Dan, and Dr Catherine Flynn. As Dan described the feelings of isolation he experienced as a result of his mother’s incarceration, Dr Flynn conceptualised a way to capture stories from other children like Dan.

For many of these children, their parent’s incarceration is one of the most challenging situations they have had to face. Emotional trauma, social stigma, and a distrupted family life, which occurs as a result of having a parent in jail, can often have an immense impact on children. The telling of these stories through animation illustrates to other children in similar situations that they are not alone, assistance is available, and that you can come out the other side.

In this research collaboration between a social work researcher, a communication design researcher and communication design students, research findings were animated in a variety of styles for distribution by SHINE for Kids. SHINE for Kids is a non-profit organization that assists and advocates for children with parents in prison. Transcripts of social work interviews with the children were modified into screenplays to be animated by communication design students. The animated documentary has advantages over the expository documentary mode, including protecting the identity of the subject and creating an affective video that constitutes a dual-process model of entertainment providing for a more socially connected pleasure.