Briefing

Street graphics & Guerrilla campaigning Jan 2006 May 25 students first year Arts and Design Leeds Metropolitan. Workshop #2 23-27 Januari 2006 We are RED, They are GREEN We are GREEN, They are RED

Imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal, a city where everybody could draw whereever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a busstop was never boring. A city that felt like a living breathing thing which belonged to everybody, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall – its wet. Banksy

“Publi City, you look so pretty!” How to graduately take over Leeds City in a colourful way by using your artistic and graphical skills.

It can be anything as long as it is RED.

You are asked as a group to become an organisation. An alternative organisation that stands for something imaginary, that produces it, brands it and promotes this in a certain strategic outcome. You are alternative towards the regular corporations that are controling the city with their campaigns. You want to express yourselves in an alternative way to take over this city to surprise the citizens and give back some colour in their lives. You have to think about doing this subtle or provocatively.

An organisation needs a great amount of things to be able to operate its campaign in a fluent manner. To make a start a structural base is needed: Who’s doing what? And: Where do we operate from? Is it a building or can it be a website?

An organisation needs an identity: you have to come up with a name, statements, values, normes, and visually: slogans, logos, brands, etc.

The promotion starts by making a strategic plan. Where and how can you promote yourselves and how could you chance the specific area with your identity? The idea is to transform the city graduately towards your ideal RED enviroment. Remember black and white are not concidered colours and can be added to help out. Ask yourselves: do we add a lot of muskito-bites or a few Elephant-buttmarks or both? How can you infiltrate visually in the city scenery? It would be helpful having a map of the city to mark the areas for the campaign.

How do you produce the promotion material? Being alternative often means LOW BUDGET. Think of cheap production methods to achieve a widerange publicity. Breaking with the regular production rules of promotion often results in a fresh and surprising outcome that attrackts all the attention on the spot.

You can think of using: Stencils, stickers, graffiti-methods, paint… Using paper: collages, posters, wallpapers… Textile: Clothing (as a free product), wearing T-shirts (or to sell), Flags, Banners… Light-projections, objects, persons as objects, street-furniture or traffic-signs/lights Selling anything that is red or infiltrate in public places like the supermarket or the pub nextdoor. Why don’t you place a pile of 100 REDpeppers in the park? Or as an opportunist just make use of the excisting RED in the city.

Apart from the establishment your organisation knows competition of another group of alternative nutcases known as GREEN.