Today was my final day with the WITNESS Project youth, and we switched gears from stenciling walls to talking about our next poster project. Over the past few months, our group of young artists have been working on a series of public service announcements to address the problem of street harassment. They have written and filmed the PSA’s and are now getting ready to edit them. We wanted to coordinate the launching of these announcements with another poster campaign that would address the same issue. So today we worked on that project.
We spent the morning talking about how marketing can effect society both for good and for bad. We saw some examples of ad campaigns that subtly reinforced the notion that street harassment was somehow acceptable behavior. Looking at these ads got the group thinking about how powerful advertising really is and how they can use the same techniques to get their message across.
We divided into groups and answered questions about who we should direct our message to, what we want them to think, how we want them to feel, and how we want them to behave. We also talked about positive vs negative messaging.
The groups came up with some great ideas for the poster campaign and then presented or pitched their idea to the rest of the group. All the ideas were very good, so I know as they continue to refine their ideas in the next few months, I am confident that they will put together an effective campaign. It should be a great project and I am eager to see what they come up with.
We ended our time with ice-cream and good-bye hugs. It’s been a great week and I look forward to working together on our next project.