Animation encourages Bournemouth & Poole beach-goers to leave only footprints

23rd August 2018

Ahead of the August Bank Holiday and hugely popular Bournemouth Air Festival, Bournemouth & Poole Seafront is reinforcing its Leave Only Footprints message with a new animation.

Leave Only Footprints is an initiative encouraging visitors to love and enjoy Bournemouth and Poole’s award-winning beaches and to help maintain their world-class standards by putting rubbish in the correct bins provided along the seafront.

Created by local animation specialists, Little Blue Hut - based on the coast in Bournemouth - the video is a fun, colourful animation that reflects Bournemouth’s fantastic reputation as the UK’s best seaside resort (British Travel Awards 2017). Depicting Bournemouth’s picturesque location, the animation follows Jez, who is enjoying a day at the beach, and learns about the benefits of using the brand new bins located along Bournemouth and Poole seafront.

Anthony Minto, Creative Director at Little Blue Hut, said: "As a local animation company, living and working by our beautiful stretch of the Dorset coast, we were delighted to be able to bring the ideas of Bournemouth & Poole Seafront to life. We hope our contribution to the Leave Only Footprints campaign helps make a positive impact on how visitors treat our award winning beaches."

Initially, the animation will be posted across Bournemouth and Poole’s key social media channels and will be used to educate locals and visitors on using the correct bins when visiting the beaches. The new bins are colour coded with clear messaging to help people identify the correct place to dispose of their waste – blue for recycling and black for general waste.

Andrew Brown, Seafront Operations Manager for Bournemouth & Poole, said: “The animation created by Little Blue Hut is fantastic and is a great way to show the public how easy it is to be responsible when disposing of litter on the seafront. We hope it will encourage and inspire people to be more aware about litter and to keep our beautiful part of the world clean.”

This is the most recent step taken as part of the Leave Only Footprints campaign which launched last month - with staff at LV= and seasoned experts, the Dorset Devils, taking part in an early morning litter pick.

The LV= event was such a success, it has inspired a number of subsequent community-led litter picks, including the AFC Bournemouth Junior Cherries. The young squad were shown the newly created animation to give them guidance on where to put the litter before they set out on the beach.

The animation is available to view at facebook.com/bournemouthofficial and facebook.com/pooletourism.

For further information please visit Leave Only Footprints