The time kids spend outdoors gets smaller every day – but it’s hard to understand how much time is too little unless we can put it into a context that’s easily recognised.
The rights of prison inmates to outdoor time are laid down by the UN. This is not the case for children, who now spend less free time outdoors each day than prisoners.
The creative idea was to compare the time the average child spends outdoors with that of a prison inmate.
To bring this to life, we visited a high security prison in Indiana to film inmates, and ask them what their outdoor time meant to them. We see footage of them working out, playing basketball and generally enjoying the fresh air and freedom. We hear from them, in their own words, about how important outdoor time is to them, and why.
We then pose the question to the inmates of how they would feel if their outdoor time was cut to only one hour a day. Their reactions show surprise, anger and worry.
We then revealed that kids currently only get one hour outdoors per day, and filmed their reactions. Because they truly understand what it means to have free time outside, they were shocked by this statistic.
'Free the Kids' was shot as a mini-documentary entirely on location in a maximum-security prison (Wabash Correctional Facility, Indiana). This was a challenging location to gain access to, and the film crew would be putting themselves in serious danger. We used a very small crew of four to be as unobtrusive as possible. This process helped give the film its raw, real tone and ensured that the final message hit home especially hard for parents.