Autism Awareness Month: Interview with ‘Pablo’ Creator Grainne McGuinness
Last year on Skwigly, we were fortunate to have writers, animators, and filmmakers join us to celebrate Autism Awareness Month and talk about their projects and experience associated with both animation and the autism community.
One of the people who have joined us for this year’s celebration is Grainne McGuinness, who is the creator behind Pablo, an award-winning animated pre-school series about an autistic boy and his imaginary friends as he tries to make sense of the world through his art. She is also the creative director at Paper Owl Films, an Irish-based animation studio that also animates the series.
As Pablo‘s creator, how did you come up with the concept of the show? And why did you want to make a series around an autistic character?
At the time, I had preschool children and a preschool nephew. I remember thinking that things would be an awful lot easier if my children understood an autistic child better if they knew what his world was like; what his processing was like. I thought it would be a great idea if there was a show that would put on screen an autistic character and the traits of autism so that young children would be exposed to these traits before they go to nursery or school.
As I did the research, I realised that exposure to things does create understanding, empathy, acceptance, and engagement. So simply: the idea was to come up with a show that really put the traits of autism on screen for young children to relate to and respond to. And that’s how we came up with Pablo.
For Pablo, he is in this creative world that we see on screen filled with his book and animal friends. Each one of those big animals are all based on a specific trait of autism. And all those traits co-exist within Pablo. That’s something that became more important as the series developed as well; to really say that if you’re autistic, you don’t just have one trait of autism. It became a very nice way of saying ‘here are all the traits of autism, they co-exist with one person and in given situations – one comes out stronger than the other’.
One of the most important elements of the show to me, as someone on the spectrum myself, is having writers that are also autistic tell Pablo‘s stories. How did you and your team make a decision on this? And how do you think it impacted the show overall?
I think having autistic writers write autistic characters is the success of the show. In the animation industry, we make fifty-two episodes of a show, because it has to sell internationally and it has to be big in order to sell. So to come up with fifty-two stories on anything in an industry like that, the fight for freshness and originality is ever-present.
We ended up coming up with a world, and set of stories, that were quirky, fresh and original and it really led to the success of the show. We have had some anecdotal feedback where children have been saying to their mothers and fathers “that’s me.”
Children watch Pablo all over the world and they’re looking at these stories that are very relatable to them and the traits of autism are human traits. So we can all relate to the humaneness of the situations that Pablo finds himself in. But then we’re giving this alternative view, this other way of looking at the world and seeing things differently that really makes those stories original for all children.
We had a head writer, Andrew Brenner, who is very experienced in writing for preschool animation and he was so passionate about finding the right way into the stories of an autistic five-and-a-half-year-old. The first thing he did was he talked to lots of people about their experiences and the more he talked to autistic teens and adults, the more he learned about their stories. He nurtured them and looked into how those experiences could be relatable in the world of Pablo; and how you could tell that as a story for preschool animation. He mentored a lot of those people to actually write scripts for the show themselves and that whole process was an absolute joy.
The reason that we were able to do it was because we had development money and that flexibility was so important because in animation it has to be on time and on budget. It’s a big project, so having the flexibility outside of that to really develop it, nurture new talent, hear their stories, and get them written was absolutely crucial to the success of everything. I have to say, Andrew was such a good listener from the beginning, really creating a safe space for people to express themselves creatively. It took a lot of time and a lot of effort and it was absolutely the creative joy of my life, certainly. And still is.
Pablo and Friends
Since the show’s release, do you feel that representation has grown for autism, whether it’s on-screen or opportunities within the animation industry itself?
I think I have definitely seen improvements in representation and diversity across the board. But I think there’s still an awful lot of work to be done in terms of this industry opening its pathways for diverse talents.
At Paper Owl Films, we’re passionate about it, because we can see the amount of talent that’s out there and the amount of creativity in our own circle. But they’re not getting in because, in order to make recruitment processes fair, it involves a lot of paperwork. So you have to fill out a form, you have to see if you meet the criteria, you have to maybe do an interview; there are so many barriers within that for Neurodiverse people. And so I think we really need to look at our recruitment processes.
The big problem in this industry is always going to be talent, people, creatively-led people getting into the industry and getting into the right jobs, and the industry needs that. So I think we have to find ways of making sure that our recruitment processes are fair and equal, but that it’s striving for that equality through our processes. We don’t exclude the very people that we need to be including because just working on Pablo, production is a very big thing and you have so many people, you have funders, deadlines, budgets to stick to, everything. The process of production can be very, very rigid. And so maybe sometimes they keep a project safe all the time within those rigid structures. We find it very hard to open up to new ways of doing things and I think that’s what we all need to do, we need to do things differently. And so we need to make particularly sure that the neurodiversity entrants are getting in and that’s something that we’re very active on the point at the minute.
Pablo has a third series currently in development. Can you explain how the show has evolved and what viewers can expect?
So we’re developing series three at the moment. Pablo’s problem in series three is going to be in school. And the point of that show is that it’s a comedy and the whole worldview comes directly from Pablo’s take on school and the rules of the school. His point of view sheds a light on the nonsense of the social script that we all follow; like how stupid the rules that we invent for children really are. And so the artistic point of view in Pablo series three has a very powerful setup because the comedy comes from laughing at the neurotypical classroom space.
It’s not the autistic person that needs to adapt to the world; it’s that the world actually needs to change its very rigid rules sometimes. The comedy comes from laughing at the small stuff – what Pablo series three is going to try and do is get us all laughing at ourselves more. And that’s a change that needs to be seen. I think all too often autistic children and their parents are trying to fit in or trying to adapt to the world. But it’s time that the world made some changes.
Pablo Series Three
For the third series, you have added comedy writers into the mix, as well as well as the autistic writers from the previous shows. How well do you think this new collaboration will work between these different experienced writers?
That’s for the older age group. So we’re making animation for five to eight-year-olds and trying to attract older kids because the show has such an important job today, we need to make sure that our audiences all over the world really want to watch the show and really want to engage with it. This show needs to be an international hit if it’s really going to deliver on its job. We know that what engages this audience the most is funny. So we have to be funny and our kids need a laugh these days.
Encouraging them to engage and laugh at themselves and at the nonsense of the world, and make sure that every single story is a real experience written by autistic hands; that’s really important to do that in a sensitive way and that engages a large international audience. So that’s a challenge.
Pablo (series 1 and 2), will air on CBeebies every day throughout April to mark Autism Acceptance Month.