chatsworth
Chatsworth is located within the Peak District National Park and comprises a Grade I listed house and stables, a 105-acre garden, a farmyard and adventure playground, a free-to-access 1,822-acre park and historic woodland, and one of Europe’s most significant private art collections, much of which is on loan to the charity for public display. Chatsworth plays an important role in the local community as a thriving cultural and educational destination, a nationally important historic landscape, and a working estate that operates with a mindful approach to the environment and sustainability.
the challenge
In 2024, we were tasked to produce a ‘Celebrating Childhood’ campaign for Chatsworth that would appeal to family audiences and increase their membership recruitment and retention. They wanted more people to see Chatsworth as ‘a place for them’. Throughout 2024, the visitor programme at Chatsworth was driven by an ambition to diversify audiences, and included a range of events that would sit under the ‘Celebrating Childhood’ umbrella. These events included; a Picturing Childhood exhibition, an adventure playground redevelopment, a Family Festival and a summer programme of family activities.
The year-long campaign was the first outing of the new Chatsworth identity and it needed to be entirely consistent with their new brand strategy. The creative had to connect the different events to the universal theme to make the programme feel cohesive while adding weight and value to the ‘childhood’ message.
the solution
Children see the world in a completely unique and innocent way. Everything is full of wonderment, surprise and awe but usually from a very different perspective to an adults’. A tree isn’t a tree, it’s a climbing frame, a rock is a dinosaur. A stately home is a giant game of hide & seek. Clouds are just oversized marshmallows. A meadow is an enchanted fairy village. With this in mind we took imagery of Chatsworth and added a twist, a child’s perspective and what they truly see when they visit and experience Chatsworth.
This addition of enhancing Chatsworth photography with imagination was brought to life through the use of illustration and animation. With the help from our friends at Little Motel, we created a series of simple but sophisticated illustrations that were child-like, fun, innocent, fantastical and complementary to the photography of Chatsworth. The treatment that we developed was a flexible vehicle to create a long-lasting creative that could be used across a variety of events, and would help shift perceptions of Chatsworth, demonstrating its relevance to a diverse audience.
