Cartoons keep children safe

The nature of our work means much is done near schools, especially infant and junior schools. It is important to get the message of site safety across to young children who may be tempted to see a building site as a playground. While we have always worked hard to convey the message that sites are dangerous, we hit on a real breakthrough thanks to two cartoon characters, Lenny & Laura.

Lenny & Laura are cartoon characters who learn about building site safety over a series of adventures. The voice-overs are done by children and there is one version for new build, one for refurbishment. Lovell representatives take Lenny & Laura CDs into schools and show them as an integral part of their safety presentation. The young children respond very positively to it. All children are asked to draw a poster afterwards and almost all contain an element of the safety message put forward by Lenny & Laura.

Lenny & Laura are the brainchild of Lovell employee, Darrell Hammond, Health & Safety Manager in East Anglia. Reflecting on the lack of materials to educate young children, he noticed that his own young daughter's favourite book was written in rhyming couplets. So he sat down and wrote rhyming couplets for two characters and drew the first incarnation of Lenny & Laura. Since then, thousands of young children have heard and understood the site safety message.