Print advocacy by design

My organization publishes a quarterly print magazine called Focus on Adoption. We’ve been thinking about transitioning to a digital version, but each time we poll our community, they overwhelmingly favour the print edition. They would love both digital and print, they say, but very few say that their preference is digital only.

The magazine remains my favourite medium for communicating the particular issues, concerns, and stories of adoption. It is the one place where images, graphics, news, and narratives come together in a cohesive whole to provide a creative exhibit of BC’s adoption community. We’re not a professional shop, but I like to think we do a pretty good job of being the right amount of sensitive and provocative. We think long and hard about our imagery and our content, ensuring that it reflects the social and cultural milieu of adoption in BC. 

With so many different media to curate content for now, I often worry that the magazine will not survive. It seems like a luxury these days to be able to spend the many hours that are required in design, interviews, writing, and mailing to produce this journal. And yet, anytime I

talk to people outside of our organization they always bring up the magazine as being very valuable to their organization or to their work in child welfare. No one ever says that about our Twitter feed or our Facebook page.

We make Focus on Adoption available online on Issuu, an online platform that allows publishers to make their print content available online. Browsing Issuu the other day I became aware of The Eagle Eye, the student-run magazine of Marjory Stoneman Douglas Highschool in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and teachers were killed in a mass shooting in February. The January 2018 issue of The Eagle Eye is smart, current, political, well-written, and exceptionally designed. And, sadly, naive to the events that were about to ravage the school and its community. But when you look at this clever publication with its
provocative story on rape culture, and its balanced reporting of protest kneeling in high school football, you begin to understand how this school, of all of the many schools who have endured mass shootings, was perhaps accidentally designed for this moment of powerful student advocacy.

Maybe the print environment is the right place to start thinking about the words and images and context of an issue. Maybe it's the right place to design a communications for development plan. Maybe, with all that's going on over at Facebook right now, the good old, semi-private print magazine will survive another day.

C4D Apps

Coquitlam, 2016

Over the last week I've become aware of a few different apps that have emerged or been adapted for potential use in communications for development (c4d) strategies. Some, like Kialo, have developed as a response to "fake news" on social media, and offer a more structured form of debate and dialogue. Others, like Participedia, are repositories of  community development models, research, and communications research. In some ways, it illuminates the gap that may exist in c4d--a logic model for affecting social change through communications. Prescient tools, like Blockchain for Social Impact, hold promise for more transparency in social development interactions, but have no methodology for practical application yet. 

Affinity Bridge, a Vancouver-based creative agency, has worked closely with the Vancouver Foundation on their Fostering Change campaign. The goal of Fostering Change was to improve youth homelessness by improving financial and legal support to youth, allowing them longer to secure employment, adult relationships, and finish their education. The campaign used a participatory approach, and several c4d activities including petitions, surveys, political interference, performance, and youth advisory teams all supported by Affinity Bridge. Was this a campaign using a specific c4d design and strategy? I'm not sure, and I believe the campaign design was more iterative than the final report suggests. But maybe that's the point: an effective c4d strategy has to have the right balance of strategy and iteration. 

Surface tension

In a recent article, Black Press reporter Tom Fletcher describes the “protest industry” that he suggests funds and coordinates the defense campaigns against Canadian energy projects. Fletcher says that many seemingly grassroots, spontaneous public protests are, in fact, carefully planned and managed campaigns by large, American-based organizations like the Sierra Club and 350.org. Fletcher further suggests that recent BC-based “public” opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline is actually being quietly manipulated and supported by the NDP government.

It’s interesting to think about the corporatization of public protests and their role in large social movements like environmentalism. Social movement media may include a wide variety of platforms and formats including public broadcasting, online platforms, graffiti and performance art. But the kind of social movement media that Fletcher describes is something a little different. It is perhaps more of a political and media network that uses various media tactics to build enough tension on an issue so that a singular grassroots activity can have a shattering impact. But how do transnational organizations ensure that they are using their vast funds and political and social networks to support the needs and wishes of local environments, cultures, and economic priorities? Are large, international intermediaries like the Sierra Club, Tides Canada, and the World Bank evil? Or necessary? Or both? Or neither?

Update 3/10: Watching today in Vancouver as two opposing public rallies take place for and against the Trans Mountain pipeline. Are you going to #ThinkAgain or #ProtectTheInlet?