#WhoseFuture: The story behind the campaign and what we learnt
A group of 30 young creatives from Rising's community posing together in front of a series of posters from their #WhoseFuture campaign
Kamina walton, Rising's Founder and Director, reflects on the #WhoseFuture 2020 journey.
It’s May 2020 and we were two months into lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. For the creative sector the impact had been devastating with buildings closed, staff furloughed, live performance and gallery-based shows cancelled, along with all live music events and festivals. Rising, being a small and agile team with no building, adapted quickly and we’d successfully moved most of our work online. We got a call asking if we would be interested in pulling together a huge, public facing campaign celebrating culture in the city – with just over four weeks to make it happen.
Initially we thought this was impossible, given the timeframe and the scale. Then George Floyd was murdered in the States. The following week the Colston statue was toppled in Bristol. This was no longer an opportunity we could turn down. #WhoseFuturewas our response. Rising has always dreamt oftaking up space in the city, shouting loud and proud for what we believe in, and thiscampaign allowed us to realise that dream.
Increasingly our work has focused on both championing a range of social issues and challenging the status quo in the creative sector. We weren’t afraid of using the campaign as a vehicle for asking some difficult questions of the city. Our intention was to showcase young people’s outstanding creative work while amplifying their voices through their thought-provoking and sometimes provocative content. #WhoseFuture gave them the space to address some of the specific issues we have been grappling with head on through our work, including racism, access issues, the climate crisis, transformative leadership and young people’s hopes for a secure and empowering future.
Through a brilliant partnership with Out of Hand and full support from Bristol City Council the campaign enabled us to take over 9 billboards and 370 posters sites around the city centre for a full month over the summer of 2020. For the first 10 days our social media feed was flooded with images of artists and their work, families encountering posters in their neighbourhoods and people excited to see something so different taking up space in the city. We knew that some of the content was provocative, but we wanted people to stop and take notice. Then the tables turned and things got very unpleasant very quickly. The dialogue shifted dramatically from one of collective joy to one of hatred and fear.
I want to preface the next part of the story with some important context. By this point we were in mid July and lockdown restrictions had eased and there were lots more people on the streets, shops were reopening and many people were returning to work. For many young people in our team and our community the previous 6 weeks had been traumatic, with the focus on the history of abuse, discrimination, injustice and exclusion experienced by black people not only in the US but here, on our own doorstep. Many black people have been looking at their own friends and colleagues and wondering how much they really understand about structural racism and the day to day impact this has on black people’s lives. Rising has always held a strongly anti-racist stance in everything we say and do, but this period of Black Lives Matter protests and posting of black squares by so many of our colleagues across the sector really focused our attention and made our work even more important. A significant number of artworks in the #WhoseFuture campaign spoke directly to these issues.
A man walking past double poster of Jasmine Thompson's 'Poetic Justice' with 'Actions Over Apologies' written adjacent.
So, we’re well into the second week of the campaign and a member of the public spots a poster in their local area with an extract from a poem written in response to George Floyd’s murder. It contained the lines:
The blood is on your hands
So, Mr White Man...
What are your plans?
Before we knew it the artist’s social media platforms and Rising’s were flooded with extreme racist abuse and threats of violence. This escalated at a frightening speed and by early the following week we were working with the police to identify the perpetrators of race hate crimes being directed towards the agency, members of our team and our community - specifically the young Black women. We blocked any new messages from people we weren’t already following on our social media channels (if you’re new to Rising and were trying to make contact at that time then apologies. The best way to contact us is via email). We didn’t respond to a single message but kept a clear log capturing every single offensive or threatening comment and shared these directly with the police. We came together as a team, literally meeting up in the park together to offer moral support and remind ourselves of what we love about our work. We thought carefully when curating the campaign about whether to leave out some of the more challenging work but were quite clear that we were not prepared to censor young people’s voices.
What we did publicly was publish a statement that we shared on our socials and website calling for the city to stand by us and speak up in condemnation of this race hate speech and show solidarity and support to the city’s young people. This had the desired effect and our channels were filled with offers of support and gratitude for the campaign and the messages we were putting out into the public realm. We’ve since had conversations about developing policies and procedures to deal with any future online abuse. We’ve thought long and hard about self care, priorities for our work going forward, and who we want to partner with. We have applied for and been awarded funding from Resourcing Racial Justice to further support our work with young people of colour. We are holding an event next week titled ‘Lessons from a Social Media Storm’ as part of BBC’s Digital Cities programming to share our learning.
Graphic reads: Bristol We Need to Talk
So, what did we learn?
Trying to devise, callout for, curate, print and install the work of 37 artists across 379 sites in less than 4 weeks is EXTREMELY ambitious!
When working with a big commissioner on a public art programme ensure that there is a conversation about risk management and duty of care at the outset rather than after the event.
When working with lots of different partners ensure clear lines of communication between EVERYONE from the outset, including with all contributing artists.
When selling work on another partner’s web platform don’t assume their website functionality will be like your website functionality.
Never underestimate the amount of time it takes to compile, design, print and distribute a 100 page full colour book.
When producing a public campaign on this scale remember the Advertising Standards Authority exists and they have rules and regulations that you need to follow to avoid prosecution.
When focusing a campaign on issues of social justice and social change don’t expect the press to want to go in deep on these just because you think they will want to.
When showcasing work by diverse young artists addressing challenging content around racism be prepared for public backlash.
Always remember not to rise to: abuse directed at race; abuse directed at gender; abuse directed at young people; threats of violence; persistent baiting or exposure of personal details - whether these are posted on your social media channels or sent direct to your inbox.
Never forget that there are racists, bigots and misogynists everywhere – including in Bristol.
About #WhoseFuture:
#WhoseFuture was an ambitious billboard and poster campaign that galvanised 37 of Bristol's young creatives and have them the space to address some of the issues Rising had been grappling with head on including racism, access issues, the climate crisis, leadership and young people’s hopes for a secure and empowering future. A collaboration between Rising Arts Agency, Out of Hand and the Bristol City Council, the #WhoseFuture campaign ran for 4 weeks from July to August 2020 and occupied 9 billboards and 370 poster sites across Bristol.
To find out more about the #WhoseFuture campaign and who it involved, click here.