STUARTHOLME SCHOOL
A campus launch campaign for Stuartholme's new Junior School. Made to mark a generational moment and serve the school community for decades.
Stuartholme is one of Queensland's most established girls' schools, with a long history of producing students recognised for their confidence, intellectual ambition and grounded character. In 2025, the school launched a new Junior School, expanding its offering to earlier years for the first time in its history.
The launch of the new Junior School was a generational moment for Stuartholme. The school had to do two things at once. Build a sense of announcement and anticipation around the new campus, while clearly establishing the educational offering itself. A safe corporate tour video might have sufficed for some schools, but it would have fallen short of the innovative positioning Stuartholme had already established in the senior school's brand at that time. The film needed to feel like Stuartholme, not like the rest of the category.
We named the project The Junior School Interview. A tour video, disguised as something fresh. The script subverts the viewer's expectations from the opening seconds. The audience starts to ask: are they listening to an advertisement about a school, or the dreams of a little girl made possible by it? The campus does the work in the background. While the student's dream does the work in the foreground. By the end, both stories have been told, but the audience has felt one and absorbed the other.
"They are a masterpiece and we look forward to sharing these stunning images and have them as historical pieces for years to come."
MARKETING - STUARTHOLME SCHOOL
Industry norms have a strong pull on everyone, including the people commissioning the work, and the safest-looking option usually wins by default. The default in school marketing tends to land in one of two places. A safe walk-and-talk that catalogues facilities like a real estate listing. Or an over-produced piece of cinema that looks expensive and says nothing. Both get made constantly. Neither tends to be remembered.
We took the initiative to pitch for a better story. A soulful approach that drew on the familiarity we'd built with the school over years. Stuartholme weren't asking for the safest version of the work. They were asking us to do justice for the exciting new chapter their school was beginning.
The story is borne out of a real ritual at Stuartholme School. A customary interview between Parents and the Principal to ask about the school and what's in store for the years to come.
ShareStory flipped that based on "The Stuartholme Girl." An archetype we have been becoming more and more familiar with over the years. Stuartholme Girls are charismatic, confident, self-assured, thoughtful, intellectually ambitious and carry themselves like they belong in any room.
The Stuartholme Girl in this case, handles her own interview with the Principal. Treating it as a chance to share her dream for what the perfect Junior School building might look like for her. We think it said something subtle about the school's real culture. A leadership culture that genuinely listens, collaborates and takes on ideas from the community.
This inside joke would go on to resonate with the school community and the prospective parents who have been doing the application process at so many schools. Now, none would be as memorable as Stuartholme.
The video tells the story. The stills carry it everywhere the video can't go. Brochures, presentations, curriculum documents, yearbooks, reports, the day-to-day collateral a school produces for decades. So we built a photography arm into the production from the start, knowing the images would need to serve as a time capsule of the school at its newest.
We brought in one of Queensland's leading architectural photographers and ShareStory directed the brief alongside the campus team. The features that mattered, the perspectives that needed to be there, the moments worth waiting for the right light to find. The brief was simple: capture this building in the freshest state it will ever be in.
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