ONE.org - Could You Forget Everything You Ever Learnt?

Millions of child refugees were (and unfortunately still are) out of education due to a lack of funding. ONE approached us to create a film to be shown at the United Nations summit where they would be calling for a commitment to fund education. Despite a short timeline, we recommended that, to make their case more compelling to the decision-makers, we needed to show that the general public also supported it. Given that press coverage focused purely on ‘the camps’ and what life was like there, the public were giving little to no consideration to what life would look like for refugees once they left. We needed to find a way to make long-term impact feel current, relatable and tangible, drumming up public engagement and pressure ahead of the summit.

We maximised empathy and engagement by bringing the issue closer to home, and putting potential supporters in the shoes of a refugee child. In a ground-breaking social experiment, we worked with willing participants to temporarily take away their ability to read and write using hypnosis. The experiment saw men and women from all walks of life (from writers to doctors) react to their sudden loss of ability, whilst considering what a massive impact that would have on their lives and opportunities.