Ellen MacArthur Foundation

A long relationship built on shared values

We've worked with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation since 2011, and it’s brought us some of our most meaningful work. The circular economy isn't just EMF's mission; it's something we genuinely believe in: when a project arrives that asks us to help shift how the world thinks about plastic waste, we don't need much convincing.

Our first film for them - an introduction to the circular economy concept - has now been watched over 310,000 times. The films that followed, on fashion, food ecology, economic policy, and plastic, have collectively been viewed more than 700,000 times on YouTube alone. Given that EMF's primary use for these films is through direct channels - embedded in presentations, shared with their Global Commitment network, and used during the onboarding of new signatories - the true reach is many times that figure.

The brief: seven films, six vision points, one very complex subject

By 2020, EMF came to us with their most ambitious project yet. The New Plastics Economy initiative needed a suite of animations to explain their vision for a circular economy for plastic - a precise, six-point framework for how the world moves from a wasteful linear system to one in which plastic never becomes waste or pollution.

The deliverable was seven films: six of around 45 seconds each (one per vision point), plus an 8-minute compilation with its own introduction and conclusion. The audience was businesses, policymakers, and NGO networks - people who needed to be informed and aligned, not just moved. The brief called for the films to work in presentations, and eventually subtitled in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese.

Scripting: where the real collaboration begins

Before a single frame is drawn, an animation needs a script that can actually be animated. EMF came with plenty of material - six carefully considered vision points with key statistics and precise language. Our job, working closely with their team over four weeks before production began, was to translate that into something that breathes on screen.

Scripting for animation is a specific discipline. Every sentence needs to earn its place - not just as something to be heard, but as something that can be shown. We push for brevity, question what can be visualised rather than narrated, and look for the moments where a single image can do the work of a paragraph. EMF, in turn, kept us honest on accuracy and on-brand messaging. It's a genuine back-and-forth, and it's where much of the creative value of a project like this is made.

Design: inventing a visual language from scratch

With scripts confirmed, production ran across 18 weeks, conducted entirely remotely by a small, dedicated team. For the visual language, we brought in director and designer Max Halley, whose clean, graphic aesthetic was exactly right for the job. The brief asked for the absolute minimum amount of imagery - no background noise, no unnecessary decoration - with animation that made ideas click rather than merely illustrating a voiceover.

Max developed an iconographic system built from simple, bold shapes: plastic packaging reduced to geometric forms, systems shown as looping flows, transitions designed to feel inevitable. Products and packaging became a kind of visual shorthand - a language invented specifically for these films. Each of the six sequences required its own set of bespoke assets, designed, rigged, and animated to reflect a different aspect of the vision. Getting the system right took multiple iterations, but the end result is cohesive, elegant, and a genuine pleasure to watch.

Voice: finding the right match

An often overlooked part of what Beakus does is finding exactly the right voice for a film. For the Plastics series, producer Steve Smith cast Jessie Buckley - then on the cusp of the international recognition she has since received. Her warmth, intelligence, and clarity suited the films perfectly: authoritative without being dry, approachable without losing precision.

Steve also voice-directed the sessions, drawing on his experience working with actors including Bill Nighy, Stephen Mangan, and Josh Widdicombe across long and short-form content.

The result

The films were made for direct use within EMF's network, but found a much wider audience. The main Plastics compilation has been viewed over 144,000 times on YouTube - and that figure, as with all our EMF films, reflects only a fraction of actual viewership given how extensively they are used in presentations and direct outreach.

Across our four collaborations with EMF, total YouTube views now exceed 700,000. We think this speaks to something specific about animation's power to make complex ideas travel - accessible, memorable, and watch-worthy in a way that longer, talking-head formats often aren't.