Changing Narratives on Social Care Future

Here at nooh we love telling stories and invoking positive change in our communities. When Social Care Future reached out to us, we knew immediately just how fantastic this project would be.

What do you think of when you think of social care? It’s a big question, with many possible answers! 

Social Care Future, like many of our clients, saw the importance of narrative campaigns to tell stories, and for good reason. Storytelling has been used longer than the written word. It’s ingrained within us to share, to communicate and tell stories. Stories allow us to create emotion and connection through ideas, allowing us to create new narratives. 

For Social Care Future, they knew that a new narrative on what it means to be a service user and access social care was needed urgently. 

The purpose of all of this work was to do one thing, re-shape how the public view social care. Removing barriers that might prevent us accessing support and to light a fire within communities to make change together. 

“Without big changes to the way we think about social care, we and the people we care about face losing control of our lives and contact with the people and things that make our lives worthwhile. It doesn’t have to be this way.” - Liz Carr 

While nooh  doesn’t work exclusively for the health and social care sector, the values in projects like #SocialCareFuture really resonated with our team. When re-branding such an important and needed campaign, we worked closely and collaboratively with the Social Care Future team. We wanted to understand their mission, their audience and their story. 

Our team did design sprints, designed to support communication and understanding. Focussing on messaging and how to achieve Social Care Future’s big goals! Building relationships is a huge part of the nooh way of thinking. We believe to re-brand successfully and for brand storytelling to be reflective of a company, we need to work together. We recently launched Social Care Future’s new website and branding, and we couldn’t be happier with the result! 

The Branding

The re-brand aligned with Social Care Future’s 5th birthday and in the branding we wanted to show the positive and proactive approach they have to their work. They wanted to create something that would share what home means to us all, how social care isn’t necessarily what we think it is and tell the stories of those who use social care. 

With storytelling being so important to Social Care Future, we wanted to focus on ways we could share many small stories within the rebrand, to create a new narrative, and to create change. In what Social Care Future calls, “glimpses of the future”, we aim to share that the vision for social care isn't far away, that together we are better and the new vision of social care is tangible and it’s accessible for us all. 

We worked with Social Care Future to ensure their website was beautiful but easy to navigate for all. Inclusivity of design was paramount in this project. Ensuring that Social Care Future’s website could be used by anyone and everyone without impairment was so important. The full website build was created in collaboration with Hewitt Matthews and we wanted to focus on bright, positive imagery and colours; a stark contrast to how many view and think about social care. 

nooh worked with the convenors to build a new brand and website that launched alongside the campaign film narrated by actress, comedian, broadcaster and international disability rights activist Liz Carr and directed by multi-award winning filmmaker Yoav Segal. Yoav shared nooh’s passion for storytelling and creating a new narrative for the future of social care within the UK. You can read more about his creative process on his blog.

The Results!

With a reach of over 100,000 this project has been so important to get right. Not only for the current service users in social care but for all of the future potential social care users. This project needed to tell a big story, in an accessible and emotive way to bring about change. 

We think the results of all of Social Care Future’s (and ours!) hard work speaks for itself!

“We are so pleased with the results, which have managed to capture and amplify the essence of our movement, our mission, values, and approach. They have built for us a hugely valuable, sustainable and flexible platform and a range of assets through which to pursue our goals.” - Neil Crowther, Social Care Future

Within the final website and other collateral created by nooh, we can see just how much Social Care Future prioristed a narrative storytelling re-brand. What could have been a black and white website page, with an article into their research, instead became a beautiful, vibrant and emotive portrayal of social care and its future.

In doing so, Social Care Future has bridged the gap between what we think we know about social care and curating a new narrative. A narrative based on home, love, accessibility, autonomy and building strength and resilience within our communities through communication and mutual empathy and support.

We asked at the beginning of this blog post, what do you think about social care? What do you think about social care now? We hope that the amazing work by the team of Social Care Future, the stories of people accessing care and the vision for social care has helped to change your answer.

Thank you Social Care Future for the amazing work you do, we can’t see what you will do next!

As experts in co-design, we understand the challenges but also the importance of getting projects like Social Care Future, just right. We also know the impact of telling stories, building communities and working together. 

Do you have a project that needs its story to be told? You can get in touch with the nooh team today at hello@noohstudio.com for more information.