After being given our groups, our first task was to decide upon a theme which we thought was worthy of protesting for. After discussions about what we individually felt strongly about, a reoccurring idea was mental health, and more specifically the way the media portrays mental health. For example TV shows such as 13 Reasons Why, or social media such a instagram and tumblr. We felt like the way all mental health is shown as a whole is not the way it should be shown to bring about change, and we therefor decided out protest would be about making people aware of mental health and the brutality and reality of it. We wanted to educate people and show them that mental health can be heart breaking and it isn’t always the glamorised version of it which we often see.
We were then tasked with creating our manifesto. As described above, the general idea of our manifesto was to portray mental health exactly how it is, not to romanticise or glamorise it. This led us to call our manifesto ‘Feel As They Feel’ as we thought the idea of making the viewer see or feel exactly as someone with a mental illness is feeling is a concept which would make people think a lot deeper into mental illnesses, and hopefully ring about change. The overall idea of our manifesto is as follows.
” The time has come for the reappraisal of how we feel mental health is portrayed. We, the undersigned have had enough of romanticised or miscommunicated presumptions of mental health and we believe that there should be a more realistic view. Down with illusion! Up with true representations! Using our design and illustration voices we intend to create awareness but to also present work that provokes a feeling that remains continuous. “
Ben Jackson 