Metro is a UK charity that has been supporting LGBT+ communities and people affected by sexual health issues for over 40 years. Working across London and the South East, Metro delivers a wide range of services, from sexual health clinics and HIV support to counselling, youth work and community research. Their mission is simple: to improve the health and wellbeing of communities that are often underserved by mainstream services.

For the SHIFT campaign, Metro led a consortium of charities across the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, bringing together organisations with a shared commitment to improving sexual health outcomes for people aged over 45, a group whose sexual health needs are frequently overlooked by public health campaigns.

SHIFT: Sexual Health in the over-45s was an EU-funded public health campaign designed to empower people aged over 45 to engage more actively with sexual health services and take ownership of their own sexual health and wellbeing. The campaign addressed topics that are rarely spoken about openly in this age group, including Chlamydia, HIV and the Menopause.

The brief was to produce a series of six short films that could carry the campaign’s messages across the consortium’s three countries, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, with each film produced in the relevant language and cultural context. The films needed to engage an audience that might not think of sexual health as relevant to their lives, without being preachy, clinical or alienating. Drama was the format: real stories, real situations, human and relatable.

Producing six drama-based films across three countries and multiple languages would have been a significant logistical challenge in normal circumstances. We filmed during Covid-19, navigating lockdowns and travel restrictions across the EU which required careful scheduling, flexibility, and close collaboration with local crews in each country to ensure that production could continue safely when our core team couldn’t travel.

Each film was scripted, cast and shot to feel genuinely local, not a translated version of a British film, but a piece that belonged to the culture and context it was made in. We worked with local casting, local locations and local crew in Belgium and the Netherlands, while our own core team provided continuity of creative direction and production quality across the series.

Drama was the right format for this brief. Sexual health in the over-45s is a subject where people often don’t see themselves in public health messaging, either because the campaigns feel aimed at younger audiences, or because the tone is too clinical to connect emotionally. Scripted drama sidesteps both problems: it puts real human situations on screen, lets audiences recognise themselves in the characters, and delivers the campaign’s messages through story rather than instruction.

The SHIFT campaign delivered six completed drama films, produced across three countries, in multiple languages, during one of the most logistically difficult periods in recent memory for film production. Each film is designed to work as part of the series while standing alone as a self-contained piece, with subtitles and translations making the full series accessible to audiences across the EU.

For Nutmeg, SHIFT is a demonstration of what a full-service production company can deliver when the brief demands genuine international scope. From scripting and casting through to post-production, grade and delivery, and across multiple languages and production environments, we kept the series coherent, the quality consistent, and the deadlines met.