Artefact Lesson 25th Jan

So-today was the deadline day! I basically spent the lesson tweaking things on my blog and in my sketchbook-I managed to finish my shoe at the weekend, although I did have some difficulties when one side of my shoe collapsed slightly and needed reinforcing. Unfortunately I wasn't able to do much, but I think it should still be alright.
We will be given feedback on our work just before half-term, then we can make any last minute changes before we get our final mark. We're also starting a new unit-Performance-so this could be my last blog post! Overall I have enjoyed this unit, despite the hard work, and hopefully I have done the best I can and got a fairly good mark.

Campaign Unit-Overall Strengths and Weaknesses

One of the main aims of our campaign was to raise awareness a particular charity shop and the need for better quality donations. We tried to publicise our charities by making posters, adverts and performing assemblies and workshops to children at Browick Road Infant School. Overall I think we did a lot of hard work; the rehearsing and planning took a long time, as well as documenting everything on our blogs, visiting our charity shops and attempting to collect donations. I think one of the weaknesses was that the posters up around Wymondham High didn't attract enough attention as we wanted; students and teachers are generally too busy to stop and look at the posters very much. Also, organising a fundraiser event near Christmas is always difficult as people have too much other stuff on their minds around that time and lots of other charities are trying to raise money as well.
To conclude, I think we did everything we could to make it work but sometimes it is difficult to get others interested and raise enough awareness. Big charities use the media to get people involved but we weren't able to do that. Although we did put a lot of work into it, so I hope we don't fail!

Final Decision-What We Will Include

Obviously as part of our campaign we will include our posters with our Charity Monsters logo, but instead of creating a TV ad and broadcasting it across the school we have rehearsed an assembly which we will perform to primary school children to try and teach them about charity and donating. This is known as Theatre in Education (TIE) and is used across schools to try and help them learn about a serious issue, while also making it fun and interesting for them to watch. We are also hoping to include a workshop in classrooms to try and m ake the children feel involved and show then how to share and why we give to charity.

The Shakespeare Theatre Company using TIE to educate schoolchildren.

Poster Ideas

This is one of the posters we designed, which features The Charity Monster logo attempting to shut a wardrobe bulging out because there's too much stuff in it. The idea behind this was to encourage people to clear out their cupboards before Christmas, when they're going to receive lots of new toys, clothes etc. It is more aimed at adults and staff who would probably be more interested in having a clear-out, although we also made a similar poster with The Charity Monster logo wrapped up as a present to make peole think about donating; using The Charity Monster as a mascot is good as it's very cute and would appeal to lots of different people so it was important to use him in all of posters.

Our TV Advert-Storyboard

Our idea for our TV advert was based on a old Chewits advert from 1986. Based on the old 'Godzilla' film it features a huge T-Rex dinosaur terrorising London; ripping up bridges, eating kiosks and stamping on buildings. The only way they can tame this monster is to feed him Chewits. I think this advert is very efective as it's something quite unique that would stick in people's minds, and it's also mocking a very well-known film that now looks ridiculous. Despite being just 36 seconds, it gets its message across-adverts don't need to be more than 40 seconds long.
http://www.youtube.com/Search Chewits advert 1986

Our storyboard was similar, except it featured our logo 'The Charity Monster', scaring the people by appearing really ferocious when he is actually putting a sack full of good, happy donations outside The Children's Society charity shop. Suddenly everyone is happy for the charity and right at the end our logo flashes onscreen, with the caption' Give a Monster of a Donation'. It's designed to be recognised as a cover of a well-known film and advert, as well as being quite funny and happy at the same time as getting the message of donating across. The Charity Monster is a good mascot to have as he looks very cuddly and would appeal to children-we need children to want to donate their toys so this is important.

Preparation for Campaign

Target Audience

Because we will be working at Wymondham High we will be aiming our campaign at teenagers and our advertising will try and appeal to them to encourage them to get involved and donate to our relevant charities. This should be easy as we are teenagers ourselves, so we can think about our own interests and what would be effective to use if we were advertising to ourselves. For example, images of sadness or cruelty, or suffering children and animals will hopefully affect people and make them think about getting involved in charity work. However I think it could be quite difficult to persuade teenagers as they have a lot to do and worry about, with schoolwork and general teenage anxieties, and can sometimes be self-absorbed so I think we really need to shout for them to hear us.

Health and Safety

There are some health and safety issues we need to consider while doing this unit. When going out into Wymondham town we need to be careful about roads and traffic, going into any dodgy shops and being aware of horrible people who might be after us!

Also. if we go into a primary school to do an assembly or presentation with the children we may not be allowed to take photos, even if they are just to put on our blogs. People can get to our blogs via Google and the Internet so if parents don't want their child's picture taken we have to respect their privacy.

Budget

I don't think we need to worry about a budget that much; obviously we don't want to spend a ridiculous amount on our advertising but I don't think we need to complete our campign unit and raise donations.

Artefact Lesson 11th Jan

Well unfortunately I am quite a bit behind on my shoe as I had a Modrock disaster (see previous blog for more info!) and I now haven't finished tissue papering my shoe last! I have a genuine concern it will NOT be ready for 25th Jan but maybe I just need to work harder and have a bit more faith!

Campaign Lesson 11th Jan

Today was the day we received information about our FINAL DEADLINE (25th Jan-eek!) and told to tie up any loose ends and finish all our blog work, as well as sorting through our videos and uploading them. It turns out there's actually a lot of work we could or should have done to add to our portfolios so right now I'm really working hard-fingers crossed it will be good!

First Thoughts and Campaign Overview

When I first found out that we were going to be working on campaigns I was quite excited as I thought we would be getting involved in a massive fundraiser (similar to the Children in Need or Comic Relief telethon). However it soon became clear that we were doing something on a smaller scale; raising money for more local charity shops. I was still keen to help as after watching 'Mary Queen of Shops' I was really surprised how disrespectful people were in treating the charity shops like rubbish dumps-after all, they are doing a good thing and donating their profits to good causes, as well as making sure people don't throw away their old toys or clothes and reuse them. Charity shops have a reputation for being rubbish and uncool just because they sell second-hand products and I felt that we needed to change this and provide better quality donations for these deserving shops. 

These are the campaigns we looked at and a few more extra:

1. Dove Real Beauty;

About a week after we first started the Autumn Term we got into groups and focused on one particular campaign that someone had researched for homework. In our case it was Dove Real Beauty, a campaign led by the Dove beauty brand with the aim of using real, non-Photoshopped women in beauty campaigns to increase the self-esteem of the population and show them that true beauty is not physical (fake) perfection. The Dove Self-Esteem Fund is an 'agent of change to inspire and educate girls and young women about a wider definition of beauty'. Working closely with B-eat (an eating disorder charity) they aim to raise awareness about how young girls and women are influenced by the media and are going to extreme measures to be thinner and 'beautiful' and to target eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia; it is estimated that at least 1 million people across the UK are affected by these issues. 

 

2. Children in Need;

For our Campaign Learning Objective 1 we were asked to research a well known charity campaign and a popular choice was Children in Need. This is now a well-established BBC charity, with celebrity benefactors such as Terry Wogan and a nationwide telethon held every November with celebrity hosts, performers, TV show contributions and true stories from across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. They aim to give vulnerable, seriously ill or disabled children and young carers a chance at a proper childhood and do what they can to make life more positive and happy for children under 18, who have already been through so much at such a young age. 

3. Barnardo's;

This is a campaign we were asked to research due to their controversial campaigns and advertising. They use effective yet disturbing images to raise awareness of children living in extreme poverty and suffering horrific abuse. These include images of young children with aged faces with the caption 'Abuse Through Prostitution Steals Children's Lives'; another campaign shows pictures of newborn babies with cockroaches, needles and bottles of spirit in their mouthes aiming to show the shocking truth of how young children and babies even in this well-developed country are living in horrific conditions and extreme poverty. Despite the controversy surrounding these images Barnardo's have won an award for such imaginative and thought-provoking pictures attempting to expose the truth, even if it's unpleasant and disturbing.

4. Children's Society;

This was perhaps the charity my group focused on the most as it was the charity shop we were hoping to increase donations for. I would say they have similar aims to Children in Need but maybe on a slightly smaller scale; they aim to offer support to vulnerable children, children suffering from the effects of drug or alcohol abuse, runaways, young carers and any children that need their help to lead a normal, happy childhood. They work with children's centres and mentoring schemes they provide a better life and better chances for the children who need it most, and who wouldn't necessarily have a voice at all.
 


5. Comic Relief

This is another charity whose main work is with children, but they take it internationally to help children in Africa whose lives have been ruined or tragically cut short due to HIV/AIDS, malaria or malnourishment in countries which simply don't have the food to provide adequate care and medical treatment for the population. Their money can do simple yet effective things like buy cheap mosquito nets to prevent the spread of malaria, offer support to children who have lost parents and other family members to AIDS and give them water taps, food and medical drugs to give them a better chance at life.




These campaigns because they choose to highlight big issues that make people care (Dove knows that all women need to feel comfortable in their own skin, and no-one likes to see children suffering) and while campaigns like Comic Relief and Children in Need organise big events all around the country and host big  TV extravaganzas, Barnardo's and Dove use effective advertising and images to make people think and reveal the truth.

Campaign BRIEF

Our Campaign Brief

We were given a set brief to research different campaigns and specifically looking at their target audience and how they reached them, their main message and how successful they had been. One of the first we looked at briefly was Dove Real Beauty and how our group would structure a campaign, what makes them effective and success techniques; like getting a celebrity on board or a lot of advertising. We were then shown a clip of the TV show 'Mary Queen of Shops' when she was focusing on improving charity shops and I was quite shocked by the statistics. Sadly it seems most people treat charity shops as rubbish dumps and a massive 75% of donations are unable to be sold. We also researched different campaigns and their advertising; charities such as Barnardo's and Children in Need. Ultimately we chose a local charity shop (in our case it was The Children's Society) and got in contact with them, informing them of our unit and spent the next few weeks focusing on raising awareness and good quality donations. 

Task

Our main task was to design a campaign to improve the quality of donations to charity shops (our local charity shop was The Children's Society). We did this by designing a poster and storyboard with our logo (the Charity Monster) and getting across the message of donating good quality toys and clothes. We also tried to make a TV advert but this idea didn't really come together. Luckily our performance was suitable to be performed to an audience so we instead produced a Theatre in Education assembly which we performed to Browick Road Infant School. On the same day we performed our Theatre in Education workshop and also made posters to put up around Wymondham High School to encourage students and teachers to donate. 

Final Presentations

Our final presentations were the Theatre in Education performance and workshop at Browick. There were two performances and then we split into 3 different groups to present our workshop to the 3 different classes. We hoped to raise awareness and encourage the children to donate more to charity shops. Unfortunately we didn't receive any donations on the day but hopefully we made an impression on the children.