Creature Discomforts Addresses Disability

Creature Discomforts:
Aardman Animations, the company behind Wallace & Gromit and Creature Comforts, has developed a range of new characters for a disability awareness campaign.

The campaign, launched by the Leonard Cheshire Disability charity, is called "Creature Discomforts" and features six disabled animal characters, each of which is voiced by a disabled person. Characters include:

Flash the sausage dog
Spud the slug
Brian the bull terrier
Peg the hedgehog
Slim the stick insect
Tim the tortoise

All Creature Discomforts characters have different disabilities - Slim the stick insect with a walking stick and Tim the tortoise on crutches. Creature Discomforts is aimed at changing the way people see disability, to think and act differently and to make a positive difference to the lives of people with disabilities, said Bryan Dutton, the Leonard Cheshire director general. "Disabled people experience unnecessary social barriers which are created largely through ignorance."

Leonard Cheshire's campaign aims to highlight the disadvantage and discrimination that disabled people experience on a daily basis. The first stage of the campaign - created by Freud Advertising, formerly known as dfgw - breaks on Thursday with ads running on the radio, in newspapers and magazines, and on bus stops. TV ads will run on ITV in January, although a number are being seeded online via websites such as YouTube later this week, as well as being made available at creaturediscomforts.org.

Each of the Creature Discomforts ads ends with the strapline "Change the way you see disability".

The campaign now features in newspapers, on bus stops and online and in TV adverts from January.

Creature Discomforts will be broadcast on ITV on Christmas Day and will bring the charity’s call to action, “change the way you see disability,” to life for millions of viewers. The adverts will be shown in the breaks around the Christmas Creature Comforts programme being shown from 10.10am until 10.40am. Leonard Cheshire Disability teamed up with Aardman Animations to create this original campaign, which was launched online in November. The Creature Discomforts campaign is based on the much-loved Creature Comforts series and features the hallmark plasticine characters with disabilities, combined with the real voices and experiences of disabled people.