Time To Get Equal
Making the world work for disabled people.
Making the world work for disabled people.
Scope have been working for disabled people's rights for years now. Their official ethos - 'disarmingly positive' - pretty much sums up their unique blend of incredible passion, dedication and genuine desire to go out and do stupid stuff if it helps. When, in early 2009, they asked Enable to run a campaign to publicise their annual week of direct action, I jumped at the chance to be involved - my Mum's been a volunteer for them for years and all those summer holiday afternoons spent delivering charity envelopes to the neighbourhood as a child really made an impression.
Scope already had branded luggage tags, which they'd used to mark locations which were inaccessible to people in wheelchairs (for example, stairs without accompanying ramps). We decided to take that idea a step further, and send an army of Scope workers and volunteers out into London one sunny June morning to literally spread their message across the city.
Each volunteer was asked to get to a pre-set location by whatever means necessary. On the way they'd ring up mission control back at Scope's head office, where Get Equal roundels were moved across a giant map of London according to their location, and, once everybody had arrived, the counters spelled out the word 'EQUAL' from Hyde Park in the West to Fenchurch Street in the East. The whole thing was documented by two roving film crews on motorbikes and a third one back at base, and the film was edited in double-quick time the next day and released to the media.
As art director I developed the campaign concept, did a lot of the planning (working out where to send people and how to make sure they went to the right place was a particular challenge), oversaw the filming and editing, and generally got over-excited about pretty much everything. The actual day was a huge success internally - people from right across the organisation got involved and it was widely regarded as the best Time To Get Equal Week event they'd ever held. Externally it also got a lot of attention, featuring on local TV news and in various London newspapers. PR Week named it their campaign of the week.
This campaign was literally the most fun thing I've ever done. Scope staff got up to all sorts of crazy stuff - they somehow managed to get into the ITN studios and ambush Alistair Stewart (a Scope patron), and even confronted the Bishop of St Paul's about his stairs - and I've never met a more infectiously passionate, dedicated group of people.
Scope already had branded luggage tags, which they'd used to mark locations which were inaccessible to people in wheelchairs (for example, stairs without accompanying ramps). We decided to take that idea a step further, and send an army of Scope workers and volunteers out into London one sunny June morning to literally spread their message across the city.
Each volunteer was asked to get to a pre-set location by whatever means necessary. On the way they'd ring up mission control back at Scope's head office, where Get Equal roundels were moved across a giant map of London according to their location, and, once everybody had arrived, the counters spelled out the word 'EQUAL' from Hyde Park in the West to Fenchurch Street in the East. The whole thing was documented by two roving film crews on motorbikes and a third one back at base, and the film was edited in double-quick time the next day and released to the media.
As art director I developed the campaign concept, did a lot of the planning (working out where to send people and how to make sure they went to the right place was a particular challenge), oversaw the filming and editing, and generally got over-excited about pretty much everything. The actual day was a huge success internally - people from right across the organisation got involved and it was widely regarded as the best Time To Get Equal Week event they'd ever held. Externally it also got a lot of attention, featuring on local TV news and in various London newspapers. PR Week named it their campaign of the week.
This campaign was literally the most fun thing I've ever done. Scope staff got up to all sorts of crazy stuff - they somehow managed to get into the ITN studios and ambush Alistair Stewart (a Scope patron), and even confronted the Bishop of St Paul's about his stairs - and I've never met a more infectiously passionate, dedicated group of people.
Documentary evidence - this is the end result of a morning's filming and a day of frantic editing.
The final version of the London map showing the locations we sent everyone to. The starting point (Scope's head office) was in Market Road, so some of them had quite a long way to go.
