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| Photograph by Anna Rok |
With an auspicious and a dripping eye, in Shakespeare’s words, we are looking at today, July 21. It is the day we have been working for and eagerly anticipating the past weeks, but also the day that will end our shared journey: The day of final presentations!
HIA Poland has invited HIA fellows, friends, speakers and anyone interested in human rights issues to join us at Fawory Café in the afternoon to experience our presentations. Fawory Café is an artistic little café in a nice area of Warsaw. The unconstrained atmosphere created by the innovative surrounding of colored walls, stools consisting of clothes, wooden chairs, design-tables and a delicate bar matches the tone of our presentations. We, the HIA Poland fellows 2012, have collectively decided to dress nicely for this event, all being slightly nervous to present the outcome of a process that has caused a lot of fun and to some extend exhaustion and frustration we learned to overcome being given advice and help by the HIA staff and the Advertising Agency Next. Now we are eager to show our results to fellows and guests. And the audience is curious to see what ideas we have come up with and what solutions we found to advertise human rights issues in a creative, appealing way. However, what the spectators experience is despite the great variety of creative presentations only the tip of the iceberg. It is the outcome of four weeks of devoted studies and work.
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| Photograph by Anna Rok |
Maybe Monika Mazur-Rafal and Magda Szarota had Benjamin Disraeli’s saying “Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action” in mind when planning the HIA Warsaw Program. After three weeks of input during the International Conference in Sarajevo and the ambitious Warsaw Program with various lectures and site visits providing us with information and thoughts on human rights issues in Poland, we were challenged to get active by creating smart advertisements on human rights issues. During the input phase, we covered human rights issues from Roma discrimination to women’s rights, approaching the subjects from different angles. The speakers ranged from representatives of the Roman Catholic Church over the Warsaw University’s Psychology Faculty to the Never Again Association.
On Friday, July 6, the output phase began by narrowing down the topics to work with. The group chose the three human rights topics the most relevant to both the Polish society and to us: Racism/Xenophobia, Human trafficking and LGBTQ rights.
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| Photograph by Anna Rok |
The HIA Poland fellows were broken into six teams, whereof two working on each one of the topics. The first task was to define a specific human rights issue concerning the given themes. Marek Dorobisz, Creative Director of Next Agency and a man difficult to please, asked us to write briefs defining the main message, the audience, the tone and reasons to believe our message. A seemingly doable job turned out to be quite a challenge. Only with Marek’s supervision and Monika’s and Magda’s help, we succeeded in writing stringent arguments persuading the target group. Each team was then given another group’s brief to work on the second part of the output phase – the creation of advertisements!
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| Photograph by Anna Rok |
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| Photograph by Anna Rok |
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| Photograph by Anna Rok |
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| Photograph by Anna Rok |
Each group came up with ideas that were to be proven on Thursday, July 19, when we were invited to the NEXT Advertising Agency. To large parts, the drafts we had in mind were approved to be appealing and interesting and needed only Marek’s and his coworkers’ polish. Groups 1 and 2, working on human trafficking, came up with campaigns against forced labor, focusing on prostitution. Main message was “Check your job offer/contract twice before going abroad” using attractive slogans and images showing the gap between promise and reality.
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| Photograph by Anna Rok |
Groups 3 and 4, concentrating on Racism/Xenophobia, came up with one Diversity Awareness Campaign in Polish public schools using the catchy slogans “No Diversity, No Kebab” and “Openness is worth it”, an eye-catching pun in the Polish language, and Racism in soccer, focusing on the Polish first league using the image of a soccer-ball as a symbol of the cohesion of black and white.
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| Photograph by Anna Rok |
Groups 5 and 6, highlighting the LGBTQ rights, focused on civil partnership for Homosexuals combining the picture of a pink wedding cake holding two grooms with the statements “Something is wrong in the picture”, and, in smaller letters, “the topping should be blue”. The other focus laid on an Anti-Bullying Campaign targeting young males aged 13-19 using an imaginary “Real Man” who can eat a cow in 5 seconds, but does not bully gay people.
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| Photograph by Anna Rok |
After 3 hours of felicitous presentations with substantial discussions closing the work of 4 abundant, laborious, inspiring weeks, it is time for our farewell dinner. Apart from the collective work, the HIA summer program is very much about people. Living and spending nearly every second together for a month while encountering new cultures in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Poland forms strong bonds. Going back to life outside of HIA means saying goodbye to people who have become such close friends that it is difficult to imagine how daily life will be without them. However, it is not saying goodbye to what we have all together experienced during the past weeks. We are taking home emotional and professional memories and inspirations. These remembrances will be essential for all of us in the near future (not only due to the Action Project which is waiting for us) and may be significant for the whole life. Besides, plans for a reunion at next year’s HIA International Conference, hopefully in beloved Warsaw, are made.
- Milena Opper (German Fellow)
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