War Child is a small but agile charity with a global reach, which addresses the problem of the hundreds of thousands of children worldwide who are forced to fight in adult wars. Despite its global work on behalf of children in warzones, it has a relatively small public donor base in the UK, and so we were tasked to create work that would raise awareness of the charity, opening up a pool of potential donors.Other charities raising money to help child soldiers often depict them as sinister underage killers with machine guns, when they are in fact victims of adult manipulation who deserve sympathy. War Child were keen to build empathy rather than shocking potential donors.

By using the childhood party staple of toys made from balloons, our work dramatized the naivety and innocence that allows children to be tricked into fighting in adult wars, to intrigue the audience into engaging with the charity rather than shocking them so we lost their sympathy and donations.