Humanist Heritage

An animated short tracing two thousand years of humanist thought in Britain — from the quiet coexistence of belief in Roman Britain, through the risk of speaking freely under centuries of Christian dominance, to the reason and curiosity of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and on to the confidence of humanist values today. Made for Humanists UK's Humanist Heritage project to mark the organisation's 125th anniversary, the film condenses a rich, storied history into a single, cohesive world for new and curious audiences.

The brief was to turn two millennia of dense, academic history into something warm, watchable and instantly legible — a film able to move from Roman Britain to the present day in under two minutes without feeling rushed or dry. The whole timeline was mapped as a single continuous thread, with key figures, moments and turning points chosen to carry the story, then storyboarded as one unbroken journey rather than a series of separate scenes.

The illustration style was built to hold that scale of change: a hand-drawn, painterly world with soft textures and rounded, flowing linework, flexible enough to move between eras, costumes and settings while always reading as the same film. Recurring characters and visual motifs thread through the centuries, giving the story something familiar to hold onto as the backdrop shifts around it.

Colour does a lot of the storytelling. The palette is built from Humanists UK's own brand identity — indigo, teal and warm yellow — extended into a wider, more painterly range of tones. Earlier, more precarious periods sit in cooler, dimmer colour; the film gradually warms and brightens as humanist thought moves from the margins into the mainstream, so the palette itself tracks the arc of the story. Motion follows the same logic: measured and deliberate in the earlier centuries, opening into more fluid, confident movement as the story reaches the present day.