Merry-go-round, 2022

Creating a piece of motion graphic to accompany ‘Act Together’ by Vivek Murthy.

“When you look at the divisions that have developed over decades in society and that have deepened, those present a clear and present threat to our ability to respond, not just to pandemics, but to other threats we face, whether that’s climate change or whether it’s racism or other systemic inequalities. If we recognise that we are truly interconnected and our welfare depends on one another that means that we have to strengthen our ability to act together, which means, we have to be able to talk to one another and right now, the truth is, it’s not easy for people to talk to one another. It’s much easier to get siloed in social media rooms where people have the exact same beliefs you do, and to hate the other side. You don’t build dialogue by throwing people in the same room who have different views and telling them to talk and find common ground. Rather, you build dialogue by building relationship first. The reason we can have family members over during the holidays, people who we may have significant disagreements with, on political issues, faith issues, all kinds of issues, is because we have built a relationship with them and we know that they are more than their view on a single subject. We can see them in their broader humanity. That’s what we have to come to do with one another now.”

 
The act of working together and building relationships should be instilled from a young age, in order for it to become a natural function in life. With this project, I wanted to move away from the digital and instead, embrace the traditional and the physical; using this to engage children. Merry-go-round is a film proposal for a physical structure to exist in a children’s playground.

Play is increasingly being recognised as the engine of optimal child development, future happiness and achievement,” said the RPC’s new Value of Play report, adding that, “Children today have less time for play of all kinds than previous generations and are missing out on vital developmental opportunities as a result.”

The wooden model itself is a Zoetrope (a toy that was traditionally used to entertain children), that acts as a proposed and modified merry-go-round. It reveals an animation of two boys playing leapfrog. This is a similitude for the act of working together.