 we're kicking off this development dialogue series in 2022 with a talk from a colleague, Corley. Just as a bit of background, I worked with Corley indirectly a couple of years ago, because a PhD student of mine, Jessica Spakers, was at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and she was looking at questions of climate change and the impact on fisheries conflict. So it was a very complex and interesting study, but it was also very difficult to explain that to an audience. Talking with Jessica, she thought it would be a really good idea to try to improve the communication of her research, and a way to do that was to think of introducing her papers through animations, which would essentially capture the core message that she was trying to say in the paper itself. So we talked about that, and it seemed like a good idea, and she worked with Corley, who she knew previously, and the product I think you'll see later on was really excellent, and I was really happy to see this as a kind of touch point for people that maybe don't know very much about the subjects or are interested in the topic, but would find reading a hard academic paper a bit difficult to do. So then when we were doing our own project here at SEI, I was leading on a project called Lococons, which was looking at conflict prevention and low carbon development, and basically we had planned to do a series of dissemination activities in Kenya and Ethiopia as well as in Stockholm, but of course as we all know COVID had other plans, and that really made it difficult to communicate the outcomes of the project we were working on, and we were sort of going around the houses a bit amongst the team about thinking of options to disseminate our work, and then I thought, ah well what about we contact Corley, and maybe she could produce some animations similar to what she did with Jessica at SRC to create some animations to describe the narrative of what we were trying to say. So for about six months or so now Corley and I have been working in our team, and we've produced a series of these animations which essentially communicate the call messages of the various outputs from our project, and it's been a real pleasure and a really interesting experience to work with a professional who really knows what they're doing but doesn't know much about our subject, and that interaction has been you know really enjoyable, and it's great to get somebody who is you know pushing back at you and interrogating you and saying yep yep that's great, lots of lovely words, but what are you trying to tell me here, and who are you trying to tell it to. So it's been really a positive experience for me and I've really enjoyed working with Corley over the last few months, so I will pass the mic over to Corley and then she can tell a little bit more about what she's been doing on this project and some other work she's done before as well. Over to you. Yes thank you Matthew. I will start by sharing my screen, you will see my presentation, all right if everything works well you will see my presentation now. So hi everybody, my name is Corley Legrand and I am motion designer and visual storyteller from Brussels Belgium, and I'd like to start by thanking SEI and in particular Matthew Osborn and the team behind Tweet of Talks for inviting you today to talk to you about visual communication and storytelling and how it can help you to create more impact with your research. I'll start off by giving a short introduction on me and my work. After that I'll be talking a little bit about storytelling, so what is it and why is it so important. Next I'll be taking you through all the different steps of creating an animated explainer video and I'll do this through different projects that I've created. And lastly I'll give you some key takeaways and we will have a Q&A after that. So let's start with a short introduction. As a professional I can go by many names. I'm a motion designer, I'm a graphic designer, I'm an illustrator, I'm also an animator, I'm a social entrepreneur but in general I am a visual storyteller. So through storytelling I design and create still or animated content that helps deliver a message to raise awareness to inform or to educate a certain audience. And I've been designing for more than 10 years and I've added animation to my tool belt around four years ago and after a career in fast fashion I realized I really wanted to use my skills to help raise awareness around sustainability and to focus on science communication and social impact because I want to help create change to move towards a better future and to tackle the climate crisis. So scientific research plays a very important role in our society but often it stays inside of the academic world and my mission is to really create visual communication tools that help bridge that gap between the scientific community and the rest of the world. And I do this by making the complex science more digestible. So my challenge is really to translate the complexity behind it and to make it more understandable and engaging as a tool to create societal impact. And this is something I'm super passionate about because I think that there's tremendous opportunity for visual communication and storytelling here. So what does my work look like? This is a short selection or small selection and it can be really anything from a still illustration to an animated GIF, a full explainer video, social media posts, but also infographics, publications or presentations. So now that you know what I do I would like to tell you a little bit more about storytelling. So what is storytelling? Well storytelling is the vivid description of ideas, beliefs, personal experiences or lessons through stories or narratives that evoke powerful emotions and insights. And what is visual storytelling? Visual storytelling is a story that's primarily told through the use of visual media. So the story can be told using photography or illustration, video, it can be enhanced with graphics or different types of audio such as voiceover or music. But why is it so important and valuable? So this is the Sulawesi Cave in Indonesia and this might actually be the world's oldest recorded story. And in a step to the science of storytelling an author and journalist will store says that stories come as natural to our brain as breathing is to our mouth. It's really a product of a biological evolution and the brain loves stories. It's how we bond, it's how we learn and it's how we share. And it has been deeply connected to our humanity from the very start. So about 100,000 years ago humans started developing language and it is believed that we started using storytelling to transfer knowledge from generation to generation to educate each other to warn each other. And later on people started using visual stories through cave paintings and it's only quite recent that we started transferring knowledge through text. And stories actually create an emotional investment. So when we listen to a story our entire brain starts to light up. Each of your lobes will light up as your senses and your emotions are being engaged. Stories actually give us this artificial reality. It connects us to the message on a very human level and it makes it more likely for the viewer to remember and engage with the content. Neuroscientists have also studied decision making and they discovered it all starts in the amygdala. And this is our emotional epicenter where we have the ability to experience emotions and it's actually here on a subconscious level that the decision making process starts happening. And at the point where we become more aware of it on a conscious level we start applying rationalization and logic to it which is why we think that we're making these very rational decisions while in reality the process already started happening in our subconscious. And the thing is that the commercial world understands this very well. And this is why marketing is such a serious business and billions of dollars are being spent every year by businesses to connect to their customers to sell their services and their products. So to give you an idea Coca-Cola spends an average of four billion US dollars a year on advertising alone. And in 2020 Amazon spent a whopping 22 billion US dollars on marketing. Now in the last two years the data has been heavily influenced by the pandemic of course which is what we can see here on the left. This shows the percentage of revenue that was allocated to marketing over the last two years per industry. But even with that dip there is still so much money being spent on marketing and communication. And this is exactly why I'm so passionate about this because I believe that these are tools that we could and should use for the better to help society create a more sustainable future especially now in a world where the climate crisis where we're facing the biggest climate crisis in the history of humanity and there's a big urgency to act. And these methods of visual storytelling have been tested and approved by the commercial world so we know that they work. So imagine how much impact science and research could make by using visual communication and storytelling together with the research and the data. Because it's not an either or situation it's an end situation. Storytelling and research together actually create this power ballot that really connects you to the information differently into that emotional way that we all make decisions. And I think that there is a lot of untapped potential there. But it's not an easy task because in today's communication field there are two opposing forces at work. On one hand we have the content overload. There is so much content being raised every day that people often suffer from digital fatigue. And on the other hand we have fragmented user attention spans. And those two together make it quite challenging to really stand out for a crowd when you're communicating something. But that's why it's so important to really make a difference and really connect to the viewer on an emotional level. And that's what visual storytelling can do. It gives us a way to open up to a whole new world of possibilities and new ways to convey the message and to share it. So that's all about storytelling. But how do we build those visual stories? Well that's my job and it is something that I'm very excited about. So let me tell you how that works. For the purpose of this talk I'll be talking about the process of creating an animated explainer video. Like I mentioned in the beginning there are different types of visual communication tools. But most of them include the steps that I'll be talking about today. Some of them have less steps, some of them have more. But in general this is what the essence, what the process looks like. I'll be talking about all of the different steps that you see on this chart here. And I will go through them one by one. So first things first. Every great project starts with a clear briefing. Sometimes clients come to me and they know exactly what they want. They have all the information bundled up. They know what they want. They know what they need. And that's amazing. But sometimes they don't. And that's also fine because then we can create the brief together. The most important thing to know before you start on creating a communication tool is to know your goal. What is the purpose? What is it that you want to achieve with this communication tool? What is the desired outcome? So for example do you want to trigger people with the video to afterwards read the full research paper? Or do you want to take out a particularly complex part of the research and really explain that? So knowing where you want to go is half of the work. After that there are two important secondary questions to be answered. And the first one is what are we trying to communicate? So what is the core message that we're trying to get across? And narrowing this down into one or a few sentences really helps to set a target for the video. The second secondary question to be answered is who are we talking to? So who is the audience that we're trying to reach? And this is very important because in order to create a captivating tool that really connects to the viewer we have to know who they are and we have to know what their background is. So for example if we're trying to reach scientists or practitioners in a specific field we might be able to assume that they already have some prior knowledge on the subject. But on the other hand if we're trying to reach a general public who might not have an academic background we need to adjust our language and the way we're getting the message across. So once these three main questions are answered we can move on to the next stage. And that is the script. The script is really the base for the entire video. This is a highly collaborative stage where we set a solid foundation for an engaging story that effectively conveys the core message. And when I work with research and science this is a challenging task because we're trying to simplify the research into a cohesive and understandable narrative that still does justice to the depth of the science. And when it comes to an animated video more words mean more time and also more work. So to give you an idea a two minute video should not have more than 300 to 350 words. And in comparison to a research paper as you all know that is not a whole lot. And time is an important aspect to take into the equation because of that dynamic that I talked about with the content overload on one hand and the fragmented attention spans on the other. And that's why we don't want the video to be too long. But in reality that often makes me at the word police because I've noticed that researchers really love words which makes sense research is something that you do with a group of people over a long period of time you go very much into depth. But how do we translate that lengthy research project into a short two minute video. And that is exactly why building a script together is such a collaborative stage or needs collaboration because I need you to tell me what is scientifically correct and relevant. You are a specialist in your field and then it's my job to create a captivating story out of that out of that using as few words as possible. So those first meetings are very vital and in my opinion shouldn't be rushed. So once we have our script and move on to the concept phase where I sketch out all of the storyboards to show how the script would be visualized scene by scene. Now these are very much sketches they are rough and they're a little bit ugly but the goal is to start building the visual story and to not get lost in details just yet. The ones I show here are very rough I usually don't show the client teeth but I make clean sketches afterwards to send and talk about. So after I've sketched out the full story and we've agreed on the storyline I move on to art direction and art direction is really all about style it's about colors textures it basically the look of the video and I explore different styles through moveboards and for this project that I'm co-creating with SEI and Matthew we are looking at low carbon development in Africa and we're trying to explain the technique of flood recession farming which is a technique that is being used in for instance the Omo Valley in Ethiopia and we want to explain why it is so important but also what happens when big dams are being built for renewable energy supply and how that disrupts the flood and in this project it was very important that we connected the viewer to the people's lives that got that were interrupted by the dams and we were very lucky in this project because we had film footage available from Ethiopia and this seemed like a great opportunity to use that to connect to the viewer to connect the viewer to the actual people involved because when we're depicting people in design or animation it's always very important that we also think about representation diversity and inclusion and in this project it seemed best to go with the actual footage over illustrations or designs. I chose to use simple but soft lines like you can see here in the middle with quite a hand drawn look to really have that natural feeling to the design in this stage I also think about textures and other details and I build all of that together until I have a visual style that works best for the project and then we have color. Color is a really important part of visual storytelling because it's again one of those sensory aspects that really tap into our emotions and for this project I really wanted to drown the design into reality so I opted for a rather realistic color palette using browns and greens and those organic textures to talk about nature as a way to connect it back to the region in particular and so after all of that it's time for design and I take the sketched out design storyboards and I transform them into full blown designs and I use all of the elements of the art direction to do that these are some designs I created for the future fisheries a project I co-created with the SRC and Jessica Speckers and Matthew also mentioned in the introduction and here are some of the designs for the current project I'm creating with SCI for the video about flood recession for farm wing and so one of the reasons that visual storytelling and in particular animation is so powerful for layer topics is the ability to break down complexity into something that's easily understood by the viewer because in design and animation we're not bound by rules of reality we can choose how we visualize something and that really gives us a lot of opportunities metaphors or actually or visual metaphors are actually very powerful tools to simplify complex topics into a way in a way that really engages the viewer and is easily understood so for example in this project that I the future fisheries we were breaking down the complexity of different socioeconomic and ecological factors that come into play when we talk about conflict around fisheries they all affect each other they intersect they create a very complex and layered situation and we needed a way to simplify that and so in this project or in this scene I chose to work with quite a simple setup with different kind of circles that represent those factors that then fall into the sea disrupting the current and stirring conflict at sea so this is actually a great example on how metaphors and visual metaphors can really help to explain a complex topic so once I have all of the designs I move on to animation and that's truly where the story comes to life animation is a rather technical and very time-consuming process so I make sure that all of the design choices are locked before we move into this stage here you see some clips for the future fisheries and you will see more on this project in the end of this presentation as well and on this slide you have two clips from the video I'm creating for flood recession farming with SEI this is still work in progress but I wanted to show you anyway and then when all of that is done we have one final thing to do and that is to work with the audio we have to pick the right voice for a narrator that's going to tell our story and we have to pick music or soundtrack that really helps set the mood for the video and audio again is one of those sensory aspects that really help the viewer to get into the right mood or emotion for the video and for example if you think about it a horror movie would not be half as scary if you took the music away and after that the video is ready to be used whether it's to put on a website or to screen in a meeting to post on social media wherever you see it fit and that's it that's how we create these animated videos and so to end I'd like to show you a fully animated video and I would have loved to show you the two projects that were creating SEI but since they're not quite finished yet I decided to show you the future of fisheries instead world is changing and so is the ocean due to multiple stressors such as climate change overfishing and poor resource management the ocean suffers a great deal as do the living species within it one of the consequences of these unprecedented changes is growing tension over fisheries expert data shows that a multitude of stressors is responsible for sparking conflict at sea rising nationalism overfishing climate change and inadequate fishery regulations are just a few of those stressors in some regions a number of these stressors have already risen to the surface and are already causing ripple effects whether they act on a local or global scale these drivers can further influence each other making this a complex and layered problem the oceans fishery resources play a major part in our food supply when fish populations become threatened our global food security will be challenged if we don't act now the conflicts that may emerge might put not only fish stocks but also people at risk the decisions we make today can lead to a dramatically different tomorrow now is the time to reduce risk whether you're a policymaker a concerned scientist or an engaged citizen we need all hands on deck because only by standing together can standing together can we protect our fisheries and avoid conflict at sea the ocean needs you because if she is a risk we are a risk that is what an output could look like and what is the impact of a visual too or what can you expect when you work with visual communication and so for this project that I created with yes a gap or the future fisheries the research got picked up by stanford university and the marine biologists and they both used the visuals that we created in the articles we created four animated illustrations which is what you see here in the articles on top of or next to a video and jessica speakers believed that the visuals really helped to extend the reach and the impact of the research and that is really what it's all about to make sure that the right people learn about the research and then use it to create that societal change so to end I would like to give you five takeaways the first one is visual storytelling is almost as old as humanity meaning that it is very entangled with our biological evolution and the combination of research and storytelling is particularly powerful for sustainability science in the world where societal impact is more pertinent than ever due to the climate crisis and you really need all the tools we can get and this this is a method that's been tested and approved many times over by the commercial world and we know that it works it is a very powerful tool that helps you to connect the viewer on a more emotional level which is where we know that our decision-making starts happening and that is especially important to not get lost in the quicksand of online content these days where everybody is fighting for people's attention and then lastly if you want to create a visual communication tool there are three core questions that you need to think about what is the goal that you're trying to achieve what is the core message that you're trying to communicate and who is the audience and when you answer those three you really set yourself up for creating a powerful visual communication tool I have listed some extra resources in case you want to learn a bit more about these topics and if you want to reach out when any questions or comments feel free to do so and then all that rests me is to thank you for your attention and for taking the time out of your day to listen to me and we can move on to the Q&A. Thank you very much Coralie if I could I can hear the room clapping you in the background but that was really really great to hear. I was struck as you were talking about the benefits of leveraging the experience of the private sector for our collective public good and I was like that's such a smart thing to do you know people have invested you know money and time to learn these techniques to sell us stuff so why not you know re-divert those skills for like our shared benefit I think that's really a great idea. I'm sure there are plenty of questions so I'll dig into them straight away I will leave my colleagues to tell me when time is up but I'll just plow ahead with the first question I have. This one's from George and it's can every type of research be visualized if he asks? Well of course it really depends on the topic as well but I think we in every research we can find a way to communicate the message and it all depends on what the different tools that you pick I mean it could be a presentation that I mean if it's a more abstract topic maybe a presentation that's really uses some smart infographics or some visuals can really help there. If we're talking about more sustainability or something that's really gravity in reality an animated video could be very useful so it all starts with the goal and it all starts with what are we trying to communicate and then we have to find the right tool to do that so I think yes I think most research would definitely benefit from it of course there are some like very technical mathematical things that might be more challenging but I think if you're trying to communicate something it's always great to think about this because humans we think in images and it really connects to us so what it is that you're communicating doesn't really matter I think. Fantastic the next one is a comment and a question really so it's from Kalika who says such beautiful visual metaphors and then asks can you share your process for coming up with the concepts for them? Thank you Kalika. So coming up with the concepts yeah that's I mean that's a very very big question and it's kind of like the creative sauce that comes out of my head but what I do I is in the beginning of every project is that I ask for a lot of reading material first so that's also what we're talking about the script and we're building that so that I really get almost I take a deep dive into the world that I'm trying to communicate and then oh it's I mean it's a big question about how creativity kind of happens for me it's very basic things it's you know having the research and having the thing I'm trying to do the core message in my head and then I see things I associate things there's so much inspiration everywhere so yeah I look at a lot of different things I will also have a look at what has been done how things have been visualized and then yeah and then I come back to my drawing table and kind of puzzle that together relatively but it's I mean it's not like I have one moment and I sit down and everything comes it's really like a puzzle that I'm making and things yeah it's a process I hope that answers your question Kalika. Great, we have one from Victoria which is how similar or different is creating content for policymakers versus the general public? Yeah so that's a great question because that's again ties back into those four questions and I think it's it's quite different in the way that I mean we have to know who we're talking to in order to really be able to connect to them I think if we're talking to practitioners who are for example working in the renewable energy space there's language and wording that we can use that we know that they already are aware of and if we're talking to the general public we might need to connect more on that I mean we have to do it on both more on that human level connected back to their lives and and it's it's a lot about the language I think it's a lot about how we how far can we use scientific terms and how much do we have to explain them as well if we're talking about a concept maybe practitioners would be more yeah we can take some more liberation there but it depends on what field and honestly also what message for sure yeah. Excellent we have quite a practical question here I think from Alessandro so he's saying that as a project manager if if he's interested in in exploring the use of illustrated animations to spread knowledge about his project how can he reach a motion designer such as yourself and how much budget should he allocate for this task? Yeah great question and so how to reach me is or how to reach a visual story in general is I mean there's there's plenty of us out there so I would say emailing or it would be a great way to start or doing a google search or something like that but then when we're talking about budget that's that's a very good question because every project is unique so it's very hard to say okay and explain a video costs this exact amount of money but in general I give clients a range of like let's say the video that you just saw the future of fisheries that could go anywhere in between 6000 and 15 or 14 000 euros so it really it depends on the complexity of the research it depends on the length of the video the complexity of the style how yeah and animation is so time consuming that often and this is a bit sad for us but often the budget kind of defines how complex and how long we can work on something the longer we work on something the better it is obviously but that's also I mean I don't want to discourage anybody with those with that I think what I often tell my clients as well is that we can also have a look at the budget available and then see how can we achieve the outputs in the smartest way possible or what can we do with the budget now can we allocate it in a way that reaches your goals but when we're talking for instance about still designs it could start f yeah I mean there's such a big range but it can start somewhere between five to six hundred euros for an illustration up to yeah either very difficult to say three four thousand I mean it really really depends on the project itself but I feel I mean I think having an open question about that budget is you can definitely do that you don't have to assume to know or I mean it's yeah it's a conversation to have is what I'm trying to say I hope that answers your question yes that's the conversation we have had you'll have before as well thoroughly and it is it's a discussion isn't it you have to sort of see what you're trying to do and the length of time you have to do it we have a question from Johanna which is it's a little bit lengthy when it comes to working with metaphors how to find a good balance between cliches that are that are easy to understand and then creating some new symbols or to represent some more broad topics that might be more difficult to understand so I guess it's how to sort of simplify but without becoming a meaningless cliche yeah yeah and that's that's really I mean that's really my job when we're trying to build a story sometimes it's it's easy to fall into these cliches or to go like very sensational and to use words or you know sentences that sound very big and I think and I try to when I work with research and science to not go overly dramatic and it's something that we've seen in the commercial world where you know it's drama and big things are always very very good but I think we're talking about a very serious thing when we're talking about science and data and research so I think we it's important to take that down a bit and to not focus on that dramatic storytelling so much and when it comes to metaphors I think there's definitely we always have to keep in mind who the audience is metaphors and some things that are cliche for instance for us might not be cliche or easily understood by people in different parts of the world different cultures so it's also about that and finding this universal language to communicate something but I mean cliches are not necessarily always a bad thing I think if we find things that people within this universal thing that we understand that can also be a tool and it's something that we can also use to to help them connect so that's again this finding this balance for me in the in that creative process yeah great I have a question from Nelson which is could you share any concrete examples of how you have engaged with the public in communicating the outcome of research that was done in their community that might be a bit specific but yeah I think and maybe also I mean because I created tools that I then hand over to the researchers who take it further into the field so I'm not sure I can only like what I mentioned with what Jessica talked to me about how she had a feeling that or she thought that the researchers really picked up or had a further reach because of the visuals and I mean I think if that's where my knowledge I'm not an academia so I know from the world through talking to you and through talking to my clients and stuff like that but it's not my world so in that sense I'm not sure I can answer it fully I mean I can answer a little bit for you maybe because the reason we wanted to connect with you for our animation is that we couldn't go to the places where we were working in order to talk about the outcomes of our of our work so we needed to find a medium that could essentially explain what we had learned to the people who had taught us directly um but doing that in a way that was tangible and accessible so this seemed like a really good opportunity so I'll report back to you how successful it's been when we're done yeah I have a couple of questions um a little bit that's because I mean the video that we're trying to or the video that we're creating around flood recession farming the idea is there as well so it's it's quite an objective video that talks about explaining a certain technique but the idea really for the video is that it can live onwards and that it can really live in that field of renewable space or practitioners in that space so that when they are building a new project around it or or thinking about building dams or working in that space they can connect back to that video and I think having the short two minute video we have a much more bigger chance that they will look at that and that that will spread itself rather than a full research paper that they have to read prior to starting with that so I think it's also this way of how videos find they find their ways into our society very easily and they're very easily distributed and it takes it takes two minutes of our time which is a pretty small time commitment that people have to make and if we can in that sense give the core message or deliver the core message and I think we're very successful I'm going to ask just two more questions one is sort of a question which relates to what you just described really I think you may have just answered it but it's from Victoria saying going more into the differences between engaging policymakers versus the public do you think that more emotive style of animation with its simpler messaging will influence a policymaker who also has access to the more detailed and technical messaging I guess it's a question about you repeat yeah I think it's a question of the difference between engaging policymakers versus the public on the one hand and the idea of emotive style of animation with its simpler messaging will this influence policymakers who also have access to the sort of technical reports and so on so forth does it fulfill the same well yeah so this this goes really back to the goal of the the of the visual communication tool in the first place um what I find is that often when we're trying to reach a general public it's more on a level of creating awareness around something um so it's it's yeah it's more in that space when we're talking to practitioners or policymakers um often it feels like we are trying to um I mean and this comes back I think in many parts of sustainability science the it's about talking about the complexity of the situation about the different layers coming together um and and it's more tangible uh messages like that I think we're trying to get across about about a specific topic um and I would I mean I can see it it seems pretty similar but then I think it's um it's how we go about the language and it's how how I what were we visualizing um so yeah there is definitely a difference but it's it's easy to talk about it in a vacuum but we have to look at the goal and then um we have to look at who we're talking to and that really yeah so it's it's different for every project but I would say in general the general public is more about awareness and we can dive a little bit deeper when it is what we're talking to practitioners or that's at least my experience up so far I'm going to squeeze a couple more in here um the two two um questions are sort of a bit more technical perhaps so one is it from a colleague who's saying what is the typical timeline from creative brief to delivery of a video like the one you showed so that's the first question and then the the second one is from Steve which is are stories and visuals culturally independent or do you need to think about the differences with the location of your audience yeah two great questions I'll start with the timeline um yeah so the timeline there's different ways we can go about this uh sometimes there's a hard deadline from the client and then we really work towards that um then I mean we you know we try to if it is a very short deadline we try to crunch in the time um but I think in general um having at least a few months is also really good to to um have time to really dive into it and to really be clear on what we're communicating and to building that script um when I have projects in the more commercial world it usually there's a quick turnaround um but it's it's it's way less complex in a way and I think like I mentioned before I think those first meetings are extremely important and I really find that we have uh we can create better outputs and more qualitative outputs if all of us have time to really digest and to for me to dive into the research for us to have these conversations about what it is that we should communicate and then yeah really taking the time to build it so I would say at least a minimum would be two months minimum absolute minimum but ideally I mean we've been working yeah and you Matthew can can um testify on that I mean we we set a short deadline in the beginning and then when it felt like we need more time anyway so yeah I am there a couple of months for sure um and I would say five to six months would be ideal or four to five um yeah so that's the first one and then yes to our stories location or cultural bound absolutely I think um that's that's really something to take in mind we cannot assume and that's I mean we shouldn't assume that our stories um are easily understood or carry the same um emotional connection that to other parts in the world so that's the first openness that we have to have there and really that's why I think it is so vital to understand who that audience is because it's so easy to stay in your bubble of um you know I'm making something pretty and I think it's amazing and I connect to it but yeah I mean if I'm not the person we're trying to reach then what are we doing we're just creating something nice in a vacuum so understanding um who the audience is uh cultural backgrounds um also being aware of symbols or colors or different kind of um associations in different cultures I think is very important and also I think it's part of it's I mean it's it's in my I think as a communicator it's it's vital that I think about these things so yeah that's fantastic um well we don't have any more time for questions there are several still coming but um I'm sure we could keep talking like this for a lot longer but I want to just thank you personally very much for agreeing to come and talk to us today um and I've really enjoyed our collaboration so far and I'm looking forward to continuing and um and yeah thanks very much I'll pass over to Janet now thanks a lot Matthew and thanks a lot Coralie really for your great presentation and sorry for everyone maybe it only happened in my computer but I was in the beginning I was hearing it three times in my own voice and I just couldn't continue talking so uh but I'll say the words I was aiming to say in the beginning about these dialogues now instead so um these dialogues were created by a development and aid policy team at the SCI headquarters and sweat the Swedish development researchers network and we aim to continue with this dialogue so this was the second one in our series but just shortly on what the development aid policy team is and also what's where there is that the DAP team we were formed there as part of our reorganization at SCI in September 2022 and the formation of a team a specific team at SCI working with development aid was a response to an internal project looking at the development dimensions of SCI's work and so despite that SCI is conducting a lot of work within the development field and has a dual mandate which is development and environment it is mainly recognized as an environment thing thank so the DAP team wants to bring forward the development work done by SCI and works with issues related to human development and environment from local to global scale and then Sweden it's a member-based network it was constituted in November 2019 we have around a thousand subscribers to have a newsletter and around 200 members at the moment the network aims to connect the researchers development researchers and the research and to increase the interaction between development researchers and practitioners and please check out more about the network on our website sweatdev.dev and on the website you can also register yourself as a member if you are a researcher or sign up to our newsletter and when signing up to the newsletter you will know about our future dialogues as well when we invite more speakers to these dialogues yeah so this opportunity that we already now have had is the aim of this is to have be a learning space where we spread findings of development research and we aim to invite development researchers around the world to give short presentations about ongoing or finalized work and we're targeting researchers practitioners and policymakers so if you do have any ideas of like speakers you think we should invite to our future events please be in touch with us or as I said earlier if you want to receive invitations to the forthcoming events please sign up to the sweatdev newsletter and yeah by these words I think I want to thank you currently so much for this talk and Matthew for moderating it and thank you all of the participants for participating in this event and hope to see you in our next event in maybe one or two months time thanks a lot