Missed Birthdays - Natalie Saunders of The Balloon Studio
A Balloon has never meant so much!
ALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), a leading mental health charity dedicated to preventing suicide in the UK, launched a powerful installation called "Missed Birthdays" to mark World Suicide Prevention Day.
https://www.thecalmzone.net/missed-birthdays 
https://www.thecalmzone.net/missed-birthdays
This immersive display, created by BAPIA member Natalie Saunders of The Balloon Room, was located at Westfield London from September 9th to 11th, featured 6,929 birthday balloons, each representing a young life lost to suicide between the ages of 15 and 25—a birthday they never reached.
https://www.thecalmzone.net/missed-birthdays
The campaign's purpose was to drive awareness, spark conversation, and bring attention to the UK's youth suicide crisis.
The installation received global attention, and the emotional impact of seeing these balloons emphasised the gravity of the issue.
After weeks of planning and hundreds of emails, this thought-provoking project was brought to life, and those involved will never forget its profound significance.
"I was contacted by a Creative Production agency after they saw my work on my website and asked me to install the most powerful, thought provoking campaign I’ve ever been a part of - Missed Birthdays for the mental health charity CALM.
Weeks of planning, team meetings, tons of paperwork, testing and retesting ideas to cover the stringent Health & Safety and over 300 emails went into bringing my clients vision to life. They showed me what they wanted and I had to make it happen. This installation would be seen globally and will be put up for awards, like their previous campaign….so no pressure! There were so many agencies involved in this, Creatives, Production, Riggers, Health & Safety and me. One couldn’t work without the other. We all had to be aligned and find a way to work together. Very frustrating at times but we got there.
On Thursday 5th September the installation began. With 20 people in my team we started to air inflate the 6,929 happy birthday foil balloons with ages 15-24. Each age balloon represented the amount of that age who had died through suicide in the last decade. Each age had a different amount, all the ages totalled 6929. We tied ribbons to each of them and individually stuck them to 783 Perlon lines to create ‘daisy chains’. These chains were then hung 13 meters up in the air. The design comprised of 9 different lengths of lines each with different amounts of balloon on. I had to work out a way of measuring and producing these lines without it getting confusing. We worked solidly for up to 15 hours through the night finishing on the morning of Monday 9th at Westfield Shopping centre in White City.
I had the most amazing team. We bonded over this experience. The enormity and importance of this project was never lost on us. We constantly reminded ourselves each balloon we were handling was a young life that had gone, and a devastated family left behind.
The response was phenomenal. It was featured everyday on ITV’s This Morning. It went viral on Tik Tok and Instagram. I’ve had messages of thanks from all over the world from people who have been touched in one way or another by youth suicide.
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| Natalie with presenter Ben Shephard |
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| Cat Deeley and Ben Shepard |
I am so proud and will never forget this experience. I feel I’ve been part of something vitally important. I will be eternally grateful to my amazing team for helping me absolutely smash this project. Things were constantly changing through this four night install so we were always adapting to what was needed. We had such a slick operation, all the planning and preparation worked so well. My clients were over the moon and everyone commented on how amazing we were."
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| Natalie Saunders - https://www.thecalmzone.net/missed-birthdays |
About Natalie
"I’ve been in this wonderful industry of ours for over 22 years. I went on my fundamentals course in April 2002 and I’ve never looked back. I continued to go on as many balloon courses as I could. This was a part-time job for me, alongside other jobs, until 2012. The business had grown so much I didn’t have time for my other jobs. So I took the plunge and made this my full-time career. It was so different back then. There wasn’t any social media so you really had to work hard to get your name out there.
Eight years ago, I decided to get myself a professional qualification in teaching to enable me to become a balloon instructor. I absolutely love teaching because I’m still so passionate about what I do. I think my experience of running a successful business helps me teach. I have my own balloon courses and I’ve also taught for BAPIA, Amscan and Tuftex.
I have had the most amazing balloon jobs in this country and all over the world. Some have been very high profile and some have been memorable for other reasons. I’ve met the most amazing, talented balloon professionals along the way. I count myself extremely lucky to be able to do what I love every day."
Nat x
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