Session 2 - Planning A Campaign - 25/11/11

We started off the session with a recap just to make sure that everybody still wanted to do a play. We all agreed that we all still wanted to do a play/street performance. We discussed the proposal form and went through it. Some of the answers to the questions were great, so I wanted to share them.


The campaign's purpose:
- To raise awareness of knife crime and its impact among young people aged 10-18 years old.

Reasons for the campaign:

- Get people's interest

- Be role models to others

- When people see something for themselves they think about it more

- Opportunity to talk about the issues afterwards

- To get feedback

We all discussed ideas for the play:

- Go to schools - not on the street - send out letters to parents prior to the play

- Trailer for kids on YouTube and leaflets to families and teachers

- Play starts with a fight in the playground

- Participative theatre (Punch Drunk is a good example of this).

- Social media is key!

- Play out scenarios - say stop - let the audience decide what happens next

- An interactive multi-choice PowerPoint presentation - primary schools

- Performance - secondary schools

-  Show them a video - who wants to be the hardest? like a quiz game

We talked about stories that have alternative endings and/or that you can choose the ending:

- Goosebumps books

- Sliding Doors film

- Final Destination film

We discussed things that we may need and our thoughts:

- One way or the other you get caught 

- being neek (cross between a nerd and a geek) is good

- Knife crime affects everyone in some way

- Get hard facts and stats! - on injuries, deaths (hospitals, police, YOT, courts), crime on the geographical map (what parts of London are worse?) and anecdotal evidence (what people have told you)

Interview activity:

We went into another room to work on interviewing each other and what everyone wants to get out of the project.

To finish up the session we looked at some video campaigns that have used plays and/or some kind of performance to demonstrate their purpose:

- Brighton coal power station

- Romeo and Juliet - modern - with gangs (Verona Road)