Mother London’s Friendly Faces project is an initiative that aims to help displaced Ukrainian children feel at home in the UK. To help children ease into nursery and school, the agency partnered with Ukrainian animation studio Animagrad, and the UK’s most popular preschool programme, Hey Duggee, to bring two icons together.

Working in collaboration with the BBC, a special episode of Hey Duggee was created, called The Welcome Badge, in which two of Ukraine’s favourite animated characters, Mavka and Swampy the Kittyfrog (from Mavka: The Forest Song), arrive as friends of Duggee.

To help them settle in, Duggee and The Squirrels sing the Welcome Song, complete with translations of Ukrainian phrases. The hope was that seeing some friendly faces with Duggee and Co would help new arrivals to the UK feel more adjusted, as well as helping children here say a big hello to their new Ukrainian friends.

“Collaborating on this project to help thousands of children see the value of friendship, across language barriers, has been an absolute privilege,” says Felix Richter, partner at Mother London.

The special Hey Duggee episode was made available across all Hey Duggee social channels, as well as on CBeebies and BBC iPlayer. On YouTube, the video received over half a million views, around 50% up on an average Hey Duggee episode, and became the sixth most played song on iPlayer.

Credits:
BBC: Hey Duggee The Welcome Badge
Winner: PR
Entrant: Mother London
Clients: CBeebies/BBC; BBC Studios; Studio AKA
Creative: Mother London
PR: The Romans, BBC Studios, Mother London
Creative Director: Craig Ainsley
Chief Creative Officer: Felix Richter
Producer: Ellie Thornton
Head of Production: Anna Murray, Emma Davenport
Production Affairs: Roger Ratajczak
Designer: Megan Wear
Head of Design: Jon Gregory, Ben McNaughton
Head of Communications: Tom Wong
Senior Publicist: Frances Cherry-Becker
PR Assistant Account Executive: Ella Nevill
PR Account Manager: Georgia Pethick
Production: BBC Studios
Head of Development Kids and Family: Liz Randall
Head of Programming: Simon Clarke
Senior Programming Manager: Ellie Pullan
Senior Producer: Siobhan McKenna
Senior Programming Executive: Lily Charles
Programming Coordinator: Yusun Yugire
Composer: Tin Sounds
Editor: Nick McCall
Production: Studio AKA
Series Creator & Director: Grant Orchard
Series Producer: Lindsey Fraine
Series Editor: Adam Beardsmore
Mavka The Forest Song Creative: Animagrad
Coordinator: Ksenia Baranova
Producers: Egor Olesov, Irina Kostyuk, Anna Eliseeva
Line Producer: Yana Medvedeva