Drawing on real life

A new RTÉ TV cartoon series features a main character who has Down syndrome

PUNKY IS not the first mischievous little girl to appear in a cartoon. She is six, lives with her mother, her Granny Cranky, her dog Rufus and her brother Con. She is playful and often naughty, and is involved in many little adventures.

But Punky also has Down syndrome, a world first for a main character, according to her creator Gerard O’Rourke, the owner of Monster Animation, an Irish company which specialises in cartoons for pre-school and primary school children.

Punky will be the star of the series which will be broadcast by RTÉ’s Young People’s Programming as part of its new schedule announced this month. Punky will feature 20 seven-minute long episodes and will be broadcast in the New Year.

The series will have the smack of authenticity as people with Down syndrome have contributed to and advised on the script, and the main character will be voiced by Aimée Richardson, a 28-year-old Dublin woman with the condition.

She was recruited through Down Syndrome Ireland (DSI) when the animation company came looking for advice and support.

“We [myself and another girl] were asked to do an audition. After we did the audition, I had mixed feelings about what might happen next. Will I or not get the part? Then Gerard rang me and said, ‘Aimée you have got the part’, and I just couldn’t believe it. I jumped with joy. Me and Mum went for a meal to celebrate,” she says.

Aimée says the series is “very honest” about the Down syndrome experience and she has drawn on her own childhood when voicing the character.

“I remember what it was like at that age. When I was writing my diary during the making of this, I was writing about myself growing up when I was her age.

“As I’m doing the voice of Punky, it is like I’m seeing myself as Punky and Punky has become a part of me. She is like any child who is six years old. Although she has Down syndrome, it is just another thing about her. She is a good example to people in the community and to parents whether they have children with Down syndrome or not.”

DSI has been part of the process from the beginning. Independence officer Gráinne Murphy, who has a brother with Down syndrome, says the emphasis in the show will be on Punky as a child, first and foremost, and not on her condition.

“It will educate children at a young age that a person with Down syndrome is a child, that Punky has a lot of interests like many other girls her age. Down syndrome does not exclude her from all of the interests that children have,” she says.

“It will reflect the fact that people with Down syndrome are now in their local mainstream schools, they are interacting with other children from a young age. It is a two-way educational process.”

O’Rourke says it has been a learning experience too for the production team.

“Children with Down syndrome approach every scenario from a different perspective and resolve every problem in their own way. It has been a fascinating process for us,” he says.

He is hoping the series will reach a global audience and says buyers at a cartoon forum in Hungary which he recently attended were receptive to the series.

RTÉ commissioning editor for Young People’s Programming, Sheila de Courcy, says she was “very excited” when the proposal was first put to the station.

“To my knowledge, it has never been done before in any animation series. Within our brief we are absolutely insistent on exploring and reflecting the world in which youngsters are growing up from inside a child’s world rather than outside a child’s world,” de Courcy says.