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Who are we?
Mental Roots is an award-winning creative education brand that teaches young people how to make animation with UNIQUE, POSITIVE impact - on themselves as well as others!
We use the creative process to build mental wellbeing, strengthen sense of identity, and open doors to a career in one of the world’s fastest-growing industries.
Founded by award-winning 2D animator and Nottingham Trent University lecturer Nathan Addai, Mental Roots was born from an animated short film of the same name that sparked an artistic movement.
Over five years later, Mental Roots continues its mission to transform young people from passive consumers of media into confident, purposeful creators. In a country where arts education has declined by nearly half since 2010 and one in four young people is struggling with their mental health, Mental Roots offers something the system is failing to provide: a culturally rooted, skills-first creative space where young people can tell their stories, build their futures, and become the animators, storytellers and changemakers their communities need.
Mission
Mental Roots' mission is to teach youth and young adults of diverse backgrounds how to create animation that authentically expresses their experiences, culture and emotions — building their mental wellbeing and opening doors to a creative career.
Vision
Mental Roots' vision is to create a world where young people globally have moved their self expression from harmful outlets to positive, artistic ones.
Mental Roots' legacy is empowering these youth to also heal others through their own creative solutions.
How it all began...
Mental Roots was born from a short film, and grew over an unplanned yet purposeful journey!
In 2020, Nathan Addai, a British-Ghanaian animator and creative educator based in Derby, made a 2D animated film called Mental Roots. It explored the mental wellbeing of young Black men in the UK — lightly based on his own experiences as well as other people from a similar cultural background to him.
The film was commissioned by the BBC and Rural Media's New Creatives scheme and aired on BBC Four in 2021. In subsequent years, it has gone on to screen at various animation and film festivals across the UK, winning awards and sparking conversations that Nathan had never expected.
That film became a community. In the summer of 2020, the Mental Roots podcast was created while the Mental Roots animation was still in production. Then, our workshops and talks for schools and organisations started at the beginning of 2023.
We started delivering keynote sessions on race, identity and mental health. But at the heart of every project — the reason people connected with the work — was animation. The craft that made it all possible.
Mental Roots is now returning to that foundation: teaching young people how to create 2D animation, and using the creative process itself as a tool for self-expression, wellbeing and career development.
Contact
I'm always looking for new and exciting opportunities. Let's connect.