Making an animated video in multiple languages to help young asylum seekers look after their mental health and wellbeing  

Oasis is a charity supporting asylum seekers and refugees in their Welsh communities. Through their Dreamers Project, Oasis works with 16 to 25 year-old asylum seekers and refugees to improve their mental health and wellbeing. The project is made with young people from start to finish.

What was the problem?

A group of young people had an idea: they wanted to create a culturally appropriate, accessible animated video offering advice to newly arrived asylum seekers on protecting their mental health and wellbeing. They had run several workshops to develop the concept, and approached ProMo to help bring it to life.

Multilingual mental health content is hard to get right. Direct translation often misses cultural context, tone can feel clinical when it needs to be warm, and content made for young people lands differently to content made with them. Oasis and the Dreamers young people wanted a resource designed with their audience from the very first conversation.

Our Approach

ProMo has over 25 years of experience co-designing digital youth information projects, with particular skills in creating multilingual content. For this project, we are working with Oasis and the Dreamers young people to deliver an animation that will make a positive difference to the lives of young refugees and asylum seekers.

Our approach is built on trio writing which is a methodology that brings three perspectives together from the start, rather than translating content at the end.

Alongside two workshops, we will run an animation skills training session with the young people, equipping them with transferable skills in storytelling, storyboarding, character development and the basics of animation. Voiceovers will be recorded in our Cardiff Bay studio, with young people narrating in their own community languages, and we will use a structured feedback process throughout so that Oasis and the young people can shape the work as it develops.

Building on our work with Children’s Legal Centre Wales

This isn’t the first time we’ve developed multilingual content for young people from refugee and asylum seeking backgrounds. In our project with Children’s Legal Centre Wales, TGP Cymru and Swansea University, we designed and translated 56 videos in 14 languages to accompany guidance for unaccompanied children seeking asylum in Wales, covering legal rights, the asylum process, being looked after, and what to expect on arrival. The voiceovers were recorded in our office by young asylum seekers living in Wales, and our approach meant complex legal information arrived not just accurately translated but emotionally and culturally appropriate.

That project taught us a lot about the relational, linguistic and cultural considerations involved in this kind of work. The Dreamers animation is a chance to apply that learning to a different but equally important conversation about mental health.

Outcomes

The project will deliver one animated video narrated by young people from the Dreamers project in their own community languages, and subtitles will be included.

The animation is planned to be ready by January 2027. From there, the animation will join the wider Dreamers Partnership Project as a resource Oasis can use with the young people they support.

We’ll share more as the project develops.

Contact daniele@promo.cymru if you are interested in creating multilingual or co-produced media with your community.