Design for a Diverse World - Week 5

This week we were given a one night brief to fulfil the criteria of the Design for a Diverse World. The project was to be done in teams and would be presented on the night.

The project was to get us to think about how we communicate with different groups of society and how we can see the world from there perspective.

We were to ask questions such as :

Who are they?
What do they like/dislike?
What motivates them?
What music do they listen to?
Who are their role models?
What requirements or barriers are specific to them?

The Task
In groups you are to develop an advertising campaign for one of the following:

Budget flights to European cities for wheelchair users
National trust membership for people of Afro-Caribbean heritage
Twitter to the over 65’s
Young people to join the Church of England

I joined Andy for the first time and we decided to tackle the National Trust Membership of Afro-Caribbean heritage.

After going through the brief we decided to tackle 3 of the questions each. I went to the library and went into the computer suite to do some research on the internet. I logged on and some of the searches I did were Afro-caribbean, likes and dislikes, history.

Some of the first information I came up with was statistics on how the Afro-Caribbean population was split around the country. The main percentage was found in London suburbs. I then looked at there media interests and how there TV habits. They watch a typical 6-7 hours but watch it mainly on their own.
Afro-Caribbean’s do not like programmes that embody the values of ‘Middle England’ preferring American and Australian imports. This is echoed in the lack of interest in the ‘quality’ British cinema like costume dramas and literary adaptations.

I then found some information on attitudes to University and Education. A broad problem with Ethnic minority children is they underachieve due to lack of motivation, teachers’ low expectations and poor schools. Even those with high ability are reluctant to apply to northern University  due to a stereo typical image associated with Northern Universities and those that are ranked highly academically.

I felt this was as much as I was going to find out on the internet as I was not finding a website that embodied all the Afro-Caribbean likes and dislikes.

I went through to the library and started looking through sociology books. These mainly confirmed the distribution of the population. It was at this point I started to read a lot more about race relations and the kind of problems the community can come up against. However this all seemed to be more based in the past ie 50’s – 70’s.

Time was getting by so I decided to go back to Andy who had been working in the Mac Suite. He had done loads of research on the music, history and things going on in London and Specifically for the National Trust.

We compared notes and decided that we needed to get away as much as possible from the ‘Middle England’ image. We decided we neede someone current and fresh to represent the Afro-Caribbean community we decided to use either Goldie or Roni Size to promote the National Trust in our TV ad.

We would start in Windrush Square, Brixton as this would link to the first immigrants in to the country on the Windrush Boat. Goldie would do a piece to camera with some of his music in the background. We would cut to him walking down the street and turning into the Notting Hill Carnival. The edits would be fast with lots of happy people dancing, drinking, families and art. We would then show some chapels which the National Trust own. We decided to show these as religion is very important to Afro-Caribbean’s.  We would finish on a shot of Goldie with the strap line ‘Join the Rush’ this relates back to the Windrush and the sense of new discoveries.

Conclusions

In retrospect this was quite a difficult brief to fulfil as we were dealing with important issues such as race, and possibly the attitudes of one section of the community with another and how they have been treated in the past.

I believe some of the decisions we came to were right, moving away from a ‘Middle England’ image is correct. It needs to be more accessible to ethnic minorities and as such using Goldie and his music and a fast paced edit is correct.

I am not so sure we should of made the connection of  the Windrush boat in the strapline, I am unsure how this will be perceived by the Community?  The idea was to link in with the idea of new frontiers and exploration. Could it just remind people that they arrived from there home Country and came to a racist, cold unforgiving country?

One thing I need to improve on is my delivery of a presentation to the class. I stumbled my words and lost my place quite badly, I need to be more prepared and confident in what I am saying.