Project 9: Visual Formats: Exercise 2: The Digital Campaign

https://depositphotos.com/vector-images/digital-marketing.html

For this exercise we revisit the First Things First Manifesto, which I researched earlier in the course when first working with posters in Project 2. This time, the Manifesto is used as a prompt to create a social media campaign on a social cause. We are given the choice of climate change, mental health or refugee crisis. As I’m most familiar with mental health, having been a service user for getting on for 30 years, I choose to do a campaign about mental health.

There are some stipulations. The campaign must include both image and text and give information on where to find out more or get help.We have to consider which platform/s to use, any size/ratio requirements, industry standards, real or fictional agencies etc. Bearing all that in mind, we are free to choose how to present our campaign. With some relief, I read that we’re not expected to produce a fully functioning campaign, but to show how we would go about creating it.

I spent some time thinking about what, in all that needs change in the area of mental health, my campaign should be about. The issue that I’m dealing with right now came to mind. I have a care coordinator and a small social care package, which includes 2 hours a week with a support worker. Currently both my care coordinator and support worker are on the point of leaving. My care coordinator will be going to a new role to support people on the waiting list. A year ago there were 200 working age adults in the north half of Sheffield waiting for a care coordinator. Now there are 300, and some have been waiting for 3 years. Regarding my support worker, the agency she works for has lost its contract from the council as they want to implement something cheaper. With 40 days until handover, we don’t yet know what the ‘something cheaper’ will be.

The campaign will focus on raising awareness of the crisis in mental heal care. There is a need for an integrated approach to health and social care for working age adults, not just older people. Also there is the troubling situation of the rise of mental health conditions in young people since the beginning of the pandemic, and the fact that mental health services were already stretched tbeyond breaking point before Covid. There is also the fact that provision is being reduced at the same time that need is increasing. The fact that after every documentary or every debate in the House of Commons people are strongly urged to reach out for help, but there is actually very little help available to existing service users, let alone new ones. In Sheffield we have a crisis line, but it literally is one phone line for the whole of Sheffield. You can spend the whole night on ringback and never get through because there is one line and one Humber of staff on the end of it and they can only talk to one person at a time. To urge people to seek help is commendable in theory, but the reality in practice is that trying and failing to get help tends to make our mental health worse rather than better.

Having outlined the issue, I will go and work on some campaign strategies and designs.