Session 11 - Looking Back At Distribution And Preparing A Presentation To Take Into Schools - 25/01/12

Everybody was really excited to be back and arranging distribution of the poster now that we had launched our campaign before Christmas.

We began with a recap and a catch up of how everyone was getting on with the poster distribution.

We discussed:
- We are due to do a one off presentation at Acland Burghley School about putting together a successful campaign, which we need to prepare for.
- We will refer back to the blog to look back at our steps along the way of the campaign.
- We will have our distribution plan shared through Google Docs so that we can all update where we will distribute the posters and where we already have distributed posters.

How far have we all got?
- Stop and search meeting in Southwark where a few of the group went and showed their poster off and got some feedback from police, etc.
- A local secondary school want some copies of the poster
- The probation team want some posters to put in all of their offices
- Some members of the group are going to ask if their colleges will put some of the posters up
- Lambeth Y.O.T are happy to put some of the posters up to
- We still have to approach some of the other Y.O.Ts in London

We discussed:
- We need to add 'Potential Audience' heading to our distribution plan
- We will get feedback from forms, a poll, having something to hand out to give them more information and taking them to our website

We got some of the feedback from our poster launch and the comments were overall very positive. Peabody are currently collating the feedback from the feedback forms from the launch so that we can get all of the information together - we will look at this in the next session.

We will send out an email via Mail Chimp to say thank you and to update all of the people who signed up for our mailing list at the launch.

We wrote a list of priorities for over the next week:
1. Create our poll
2. What happens next week when we do our presentation?
3. Create a order form for the website so that people can order our posters

We discussed the questions that we are going to put into our poll:
- How effective is the poster?
- Where did you see the poster?
- What is your age range? (u13, 13-19, 19-25 or 25+)

The face to face feedback will be of a better quality. When we do our presentations in schools we will get some qualitative feedback.

For the school presentations:
- We will need somebody to make notes for us
- The turning point tool which is an interactive way of collecting feedback and will be a lot more fun to collect feedback.

Group activity:



We discussed the structure of the school presentations:
- 1 hour sessions
- Background about everyone and how the poster idea happened
- Steps and professional help
- What's next for the campaign

How are we going to make it interesting?
- Give some statistics through a fun quiz
- Give them a group activity and ask how they would have done it differently? and what their idea would be?

The presentation structure:
1. Story, show poster and what's next
2.Questions and answers
3. Poster feedback
4. Group exercise
5. Feedback
6. Questions and answers

Katy Dawe from Art Against Knives came in to speak to us about a large agency in London who will help us get our poster where it will be seen more and have a larger impact.

We all worked on a one pager that Katy will take to the agency so that we can tell them what we want from them and what our poster is all about.

Your Choice Your Future Poster Launch - 12/01/12

Today everybody was really excited as it was our official poster launch. Both versions of our poster are going to be exhibited in the Art Against Knives shop in Boxpark for the next two weeks which we are all really grafeful for from Katy Dawe.

We all helped to add the finishing touches to the exhibition and it looked really great. Everyone who gave speeches practiced and the rest of us were preparing for people to arrive. We even had a chance to take a few photographs before it all kicked off.

We showed the two short films that some of the group worked on about the amount of pressure that there is on young people to get involved with gang culture. They were called Pressure 1 and Pressure 2. The films looked really great and everybody commented at how professional they looked. After the short films, it was time for everyone's speeches and they were really great.

After speeches the public started to leave so we all headed out to Boxpark and handed out some of the flyers that we had specially made for the launch to draw more people in. We followed the night on Twitter, taking photo's and tweeting them as the launch went on.



There was a great show of people and the launch was an all round success. The exhibition will be running for the next two weeks at the Art Against Knives gallery in Boxpark, Shoreditch (Nearest station: Shoreditch High Street).

Thank you for all of your hard work everybody!

Setting Up For Our Poster launch - 11/01/12

This session we all met up at the Art Against Knives shop in Boxpark to setup for our launch tomorrow evening, 12/01/12.

Everybody was really looking forward to the launch and excited to see the final creation of everybody's hard work.

We all helped to put the poster into the frames to go up at the launch. We decided that we wanted both versions of the poster displayed, the one with Niall's photograph in the background and the one with just a grey backdrop.

We sketched out a diagram of where we all wanted everything to go on the day of the launch.

After we had all discussed where everything would go, we discussed what we may need for the launch and worked on speeches.

Session 10 - Finishing All Campaign Assets And Setting Out An Evaluation Plan - 04/01/12

We started the session with a look at the final draft of our poster, put together by Aaron our graphic designer/illustrator.

We all gave feedback on the poster:


Brief feedback of all of the designs (In order of slideshow)

1.

- Too stereotypical with the background (i.e. looks like people who carry knives only live on council estates)

- Doesn’t work with background as the images are so strong

- It’s more about the boy so the background adds to much noise

- Background doesn’t really add anything to the message

- The last two images aren’t clear what’s going on

2.

- Like the background

- The grim reaper looks good

3.

- Like how it is darker and fades

4.

- Too bright

- Faded out too much

5.

- Do not want to use

Final Decisions

The Words
Is this the life you want? (at the top instead of your choice your future)
Choose life drop the knife (underneath the question)
You choice your future (at the bottom of the poster)

Background
To use background 3 (the darker one that is light in one corner and gets darker)

Final Images (6 and 7)

- The gravestone is too big – so make it a bit smaller (7)

- Put Adam’s hands behind his back in cuffs and standing (like original sketch - 6)

- Turn the gravestone around so that it is facing away from him, but so that you can tell it is a gravestone (take the skull off) (7)

- Give Adam more of a rugged beard and a bald head (6)

For The Launch/Exhibition
We have decided to have two of the different posters for the exhibition to show the progress. So we will get 1 (With the original photograph background) printed large and our new poster with the adjustments and background (3).

The Poster Launch
Katy came in from Art Against Knives to speak about the launch.

On: 

Thursday 12th January 2012

At: 

Art Against Knives

Unit 55,

Boxpark,

Bethnal Green Road,

E1 6JJ

From: 

6-8pm

We all discussed:
- We should get the poster's printed at A0 to go on display at the launch
- We will put the final draft and final poster together at the launch to show how our ideas have progressed
- Offer two options of the poster to TFL and Boris Johnson
- Get everybody to sign a poster so that we can keep it for reference and achievements
- Send out VIP invites for the opening
- Send out other invites for the rest of the week as Katy has agreed to let us have the posters up for a week after the launch
- Have something written next to the poster's and a quote from all of the group (an A4 campaigner)
- Have some postcards to hand out to everyone to take away with them at the exhibition
- Take tonnes of photos during the launch
- Have the QR code easily accessible so that it will divert everyone to the website
- Have the film that the boys created playing at the launch (Pressure 1 and 2)

Looking At The Website
We have created a temporary website for the poster campaign so that people can see what the project is about. Everybody fed back on what they wanted to be featured on the site.
- Two key statistics to stand out
- Make the logo in one image
- Links to all of the project pages (Facebook, Twitter, etc)
- Logos for everyone involved
- Have a sign up to a mailing list
- Tagging up to date
- A counter for views
- A Facebook like button
- Short pieces about everyone

Evaluating Our Progress

We discussed how we would evaluate the campaign, so we know what people think and if things are changing.

- Have a poll

- Face to face evaluation

- Paper based questionnaire (take to the launch)

- Constantly collecting feedback

- Look at the strategy to take the project forward

Looking At The Distribution Plan

We looked at our distribution plan and discussed the final amendments and what we may be missing so far.

- Art Against Knives will take 20 posters

- Always mark down the location of where you have taken the posters and when

- Look at taking it to hospitals (Whitechapel, Kings, etc)

Everybody filled in their feedback forms for the session and left excited about the poster launch next week.

Session 9 - Looking At Distribution - 14/12/11

We were introduced to a lady called Sarah Scarsbrook who came to speak to us about distribution for our poster.



Who will we give the poster to and how will we get our message across?
We discussed and came up with a list of who we would send our poster to and how many we would need. Sarah talked about a good way to put all the information in one place, which was to put it in a chart that she handed us out. She mentioned that it was important to spread out distribution responsibilities. These are just a few ideas that were mentioned:

- Talks in schools
- Job centres
- Talks in youth centres
- YOT
- Mayor (letter)
- Government (letter)
- Media (letter, press release)
- Housing notice boards
- Peabody head office
- Colleges
- Council boards

We shared out the responsibilities of distribution between the group and everyone will take charge of one specific place that we will take our poster to.


QR Codes
Sarah discussed how important QR codes are now and that it gives people the opportunity to scan it and walk away and still be able to access where we will be taking them to. This is something we will have to look at so that we know where the best place for our audience is to be taken. We agreed that Facebook or Twitter would be our best bet. We looked at our QR code from our blog and saw how effective that it was.

She gave us some free websites that we can generate a QR code for our poster from.
- Smarty tags
- Kimtag

Surveys
Sarah explained that surveys work as a measure of finding out of people are understanding our message and if it was effective for them. She gave us some websites where we can create free surveys for our Facebook, etc.
- Survey Monkey
- Survey Gizmo

Poster Sizes
Sarah discussed poster sizes with us and we all agreed that we will have them printed in A4, A3 and A2 sizes.

A special thanks to Sarah for coming in to speak to us about distribution.

Poster Launch
Katy Dawe from Art Against Knives has agreed for us to hold our poster launch party at her shop in Boxpark in Shoreditch. It will be on 12/01/12 from 6-8pm in The Art Against Knives shop.

Choosing Our Final Photograph
We all looked through Niall's final photographs and chose the one photo that we thought was the best to go on our poster. The image was 0033, which you will have to watch this space for the final poster to see. We are all really excited as our poster has come together brilliantly.

Writing A Letter To Boris
To finish the session we all worked on a letter to send to Boris Johnson. We worked really hard to word it and we all hope that he can make it to our poster launch to support our campaign. All that is left to do know is to wait for the response.

Residential Weekend Sessions - 09/12/11-11/12/11

We went away for a weekend residential to Swindon on 9 December 2011 to spend some time completing our project. The residential was with PGL, who offered us a lot of team activities alongside some morning sessions, which helped us to completion point of our campaign.

Residential – Day 1
We left London in the morning and headed up to Swindon PGL by minibus. We arrived in time for lunch then headed outside for some activities. We did a zip wire activity, then learnt some survival skills. We spent the evening team building with some team tournaments of darts and table tennis, which everybody really enjoyed.

Residential – Day 2

AM - Media challenge
We started the morning off with a team challenge.

Group Activity:

The scenario was that the world had been taken over by adults who are rounding up and imprisoning all under 24s. It was down to us to organise a revolution to defend our age group from unjust incarceration.

Our challenge was to create a short video broadcast to call all under 24s across the UK and fight the oppression.

The video had to be:
- Shot in one take
- Less than one minute long

We uploaded our videos to YouTube and then watched them all together.







We were introduced to the idea that this residential was all about the future. To get a clear vision for our campaign and know what success would be, we did an exercise where we put ourselves two months into the future after the campaign had launched.

How does it feel?
- Great!
- See the changes we’ve affected
- Strong impact
- People thinking positive
- Putting away knives and guns and getting stuck into education
- Boris Johnson, Barak Obama and David Cameron support our campaign


How many people have we reached (young people)?
- 7,372

What do people think?
- Opened their eyes
- Best poster they’ve ever seen
- 95% positive feedback
- 3% didn’t understand
- 2% negative

Where’s the best places people have seen the poster?
- Buses/bus stops
- West end McDonalds - instead of a toy, a poster
- Tube
- Westminster
- Newspapers – top story (Metro, Evening Standard, South London press)
- Downing Street


What do you plan to do next?
- Start a new project

We then looked at everyone’s personal stories and why we all care about the campaign.

Personal stories

We split up into two groups and interviewed everyone, one at a time whilst everyone else made notes. We discussed and decided who will represent the group by telling their stories if asked by the press, etc.

- Name, age and where you live
- What was your best experience growing up?
- What has your experience been of knife crime or the effects of knife crime?
- How did that make you feel?
- What do you think the effects were on other people i.e. victim, victim’s family, perpetrator, etc.?
- What do you want to say to people who might become involved with knife crime?
- How do you think this poster campaign could help?

We reviewed our footage so far and decided on what we would use to send to the video editor to be edited professionally.




PM
After lunch we all headed out for some more team building activities. These were trapeze and quad biking which was really great fun and very muddy.

Day 3
AM - Presentation and public speaking

We started off the session by discussing a group activity:

Set the scene - You've been invited back to the Salmon Centre to launch your poster campaign with their football group at the end of the matches. There will be 20 young people, aged 12-15 years old and you've go 3 minutes to find out:

What do you want them to go away thinking?
- Think about how important life is
- How knife crime can affect them

What do you want them to feel?
- Guilty
- Ashamed
- Aware/a bit scared

How would you like them to describe it to their friends?
- Carrying a knife isn't good

We looked at speeches and what makes a good one. We watched a YouTube video of the world famous speech 'I have a dream' by Martin Luther King.

We discussed what worked well about the speech:
- Repetition
- Relating to his audience
- Inclusive
- Rhythm
- Contrast
- Metaphor
- Makes it personal
- Quotes
- Holds to account

We did an exercise as individuals, after being handed a sheet of knife crime stats. This was to look at how we will address people, i.e. the media with some form of speech.

We had to answer the following questions:
- What's your key message?
- What stats would you use?
- How would you explain your reason for doing the poster?



We had to see what stats that we had remembered during our discussion as the average person listens to approx 17% of a presentation:
- Knife crime in London is up by 23%
- Lambeth has the highest rate of knife crime
- 2076 knife crime incidents in London
- Knife crime has rised from 13.6% since 2006

We looked at AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) and how we can get people's attention. We split onto three groups and acted out how we would approach and get young people interested in our campaign. Some ideas were:
- Play pool/a game
- Make a deal
- Use sweets

Campaign message and social media
We all finalised our campaign message and name and looked at some of the campaigns that have already been done.

We decided on the text:
- Is this the life you want? - as our main rhetorical question on the poster
- Your choice, your future - we decided to use as our logo and at the bottom of our poster

Finally we set up a campaign Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and WordPress account so that we can promote our campaign, keep everyone updated, etc.

PM
Some of the group did an aeroball activity. We all recorded a short video of what the main thing we got out of the weekend.



Everybody had a really great weekend and learnt lots of new skills including team building and all about speeches.

Session 8 – Looking At Test Photographs And Learning About Being An Art director – 07/12/11

We began our session by finalising plans for the residential that we are going on as part of our campaign 09/12/11 – 11/12/11. We discussed the update from Niall, the photographer and Aaron, the illustrator on feedback that we gave on the illustrations from last week’s session.

We were introduced to Jonathan Barnbrook, who is a well known graphic designer of one of the evolution poster’s we looked at for inspiration for this campaign. 

Jonathan talked to us about:

- Looking at what a poster is

- Gave us a break-down of what a graphic designer is – somebody who organises information for people to understand it and put across what’s important

- He is a less commercial graphic designer

- One person’s directive thought creates a poster

He talked us through some examples of good and bad posters:

Obama ‘hope’ poster:
- Simple
- Example of a good poster
- Expressing the spirit

Briton wants you poster:
- Appeals to patriotism
- Addresses the viewer directly
- Simple

Labour isn't working poster:
- Got direct statement
- Says action

New labour, new danger poster:
- Bad example
- You remember it for the wrong reasons

Use spades, not ships poster:
- Clever

Anatomy of Murder film poster:
- Simple
- Makes you want to investigate more

Jaws film poster:
- Sums everything up in the poster

American Beauty film poster:
- Simplicity helps
- Great poster

Gun evolution poster:
- Cliché
- “If you use violence, the only person you are going to kill is yourself in the end.”

Osama Bin Laden and Ronald McDonald poster:
- Humour makes people think, and raises a smile
- KGI poster
- Two extremes

Things to consider when creating a poster:
- Keep it simple and do lots of promotion
- "If everything is shouting, then nobody can hear.”
- They should “inform and condense”
- A good poster stays around for a long time
- It has got to attract attention!
- Simplify your poster – make sure you know what you are trying to say
- Simple elements, don’t try to complicate

We had a questions and answers session with Jonathon and learnt about what being an art director involves:



Jonathan also gave us some feedback on our poster:

We looked at the test photographs that Niall’s assistant, Ryan took with a few members of the group last week.

Here is the feedback we all gave:

General feedback
- Interested in having a muted background.
- Need a lot of pavement – for the evolution line to stand on
- Need a building in the background
- Want it to be duller

Image 019
- Like the scene
- Not sure about the building in the background
- The colours are decent

Image 028
- Looks decent
- Like the pavement/space
- Building looks decent

Image 044
- It would be better if it was from the side angle, with the pavement in the foreground

Image 055
- Liked the ‘no more war’ graffiti

Image 057
- Like the long pathway
- Like the background
- The colours in the green leaves, etc are vibrant and look good