feminist poster campaign guide - everyday feminism · how to organize a feminist poster campaign -...

How to Organize a Feminist Poster Campaign - A Guide for Campus Organizers

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Everyday Feminism | Visit us at: everydayfeminism.com 1!

Introduction

So you want to bring the “Why I’m an Everyday Feminist” poster campaign to your campus – awesome! At Everyday Feminism, we’re really excited to support you in showing your community that there are tons of people living lives grounded in values of respect, equality, and love for themselves and others – regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, race, class, and other social differences. In a nutshell, this poster campaign is centered around getting people to create posters and have their photo of them holding it shared with others. To make it easy for them, you will host a photo shoot where you have a booth ready with all the materials and equipment for them. So they just have to show up, write down their statement, and get their photos taken! There are also all sorts of other ways to go beyond just these poster photos, which we’ll explore later. Here are some examples of other posters submitted: !

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Why Launch a Feminist Poster Campaign in the First Place?

When many people think about feminism and who’s a feminist, they mainly think of media-fueled misconceptions and myths of angry “feminazi’s” who hate men. This stigma scares off even progressive people who end up saying things like, “I’m not a feminist but I believe in gender equality.” Unfortunately, this also means that tons of people, who would otherwise be feminists, don’t try to learn about feminism and engage in the level of consciousness raising and critical thinking common in feminist groups but not as common elsewhere. They don’t realize how much feminism can help them navigate and stand up to society’s messages and make sense of the everyday violence, dominance, and silencing used against them and people they care about simply due to their gender, sexual orientation, race, class, size, age, ability, and more. Too often, they continue to feel like the “crazy one” when everyone else around them is normalizing these behaviors instead of realizing that society’s the crazy one. They’re actually just sane enough to see it. So this poster campaign is about showing the power and importance of feminism in the everyday lives of people as they question society’s messages about what’s “true”, “right”, and “normal” in order to work through issues, stand up for themselves, and live their truth. It’s about normalizing the existence of feminists and mainstreaming feminism in our society - one person, one campus at a time. Sound good? Let’s get started then. !The 9 Step Process For Organizing a Feminist Poster Campaign

To make it easy for you, we’ve created this step-by-step process to follow. However, if you find, for any reason, a step (or many) aren’t appropriate or most effective for your campus, please feel free to do something different. This is more of a guidelines that you can customize as needed. Also if you find something missing or not helpful, please let us know so we can update this guide for future campaigns. !1) Recruit 2-3 key people to be on your core team of organizers.

As Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." So the first step is to find your core team of around 2-3 other people to help you organize the poster campaign. There’s a lot of moving parts depending on how big you want to do it, and it’s always more fun to do things in groups anyways. Keep the following in mind as you identify and talk with different people:

• Think about the skills needed for this campaign and get people who can complement your own skill set. Some skills include being able to: lead people well, plan projects well, be highly detail oriented, track progress well, be highly organized, like talking to lots of people, be well-connected with other student groups, get people excited, have graphic design skills.


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• Narrow down your list depending on 1) their level of commitment to the cause, 2) if

they have a useful skill needed for the core team, and 3) if they’re easy to work with. If someone has two but not all three, they may be a better match for another role outside of the core team.

• Include leaders from different student networks, if possible. Much of this poster

campaign’s success will be related to how many people are asked by someone they trust to do a poster. So while you’ll be reaching out networks in a future step, it’s good to have a few of the core team members represent some of the major networks on your campus.

!2) Reach out to different student networks to help prom ote the

cam paign.

In a poster campaign, the more posters, the better! So tapping into existing networks is a great efficient way to get a high number of people engaged.

So identify and work with a key leader in each student network who will be your main point of contact for promoting the campaign to their group. Remember the more you solicit their opinion and brainstorm promotion ideas together, the more ownership they will feel and want to promote it.

Some obvious groups to reach out to include:

• Gender studies department and feminist student groups • Ethnic studies department and race/ethnicity-based student centers and groups like

Black Studies Departments, Asian American Resource Student Centers, Latin@ Mentoring Programs.

• LGBTQ student centers and groups like Queer/Sexual Diversity Studies Departments, Queer Resource Centers, and Gay-Straight Alliances.

• Institutional programs and student groups addressing violence on campus like Sexual Violence Prevention Programs and Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER).

• Institutional programs supporting campus life like Resident Advisors (RA’s) and Office of Student Affairs.

While these are groups more likely to be allies in your poster campaign, think outside the box and see if there are any student groups who’d be interested - maybe a socially conscious fraternity or sorority, women or men’s sports teams, or popular student band that can play at the photo shoot.

Depending on your campus, it may be easy or challenging to work with different programs and student groups. Sometimes that may be related to preconceived notions about feminism and its relevancy to different groups that aren’t focused on white, cisgender, straight women. Sometimes that may be related to past history and relationships between the different groups. While in those situations, it is challenging to work with others, you can also see the poster campaign as an opportunity to bust myths about feminism and show how feminism is for everyone and/or as an opportunity to build trust and relationships with groups of people who could be allies.


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Depending on the situation, this may be harder or easier to do but it’s definitely worth reaching out even if it doesn’t always work out.

!3) Create a plan and budget.

To get a sense of what the poster campaign will take, create an initial plan to work with and figure out the related costs. Some questions to answer are:

• Where will the photo shoot take place? What day is it available and makes sense

for the campaign? Look for a place that is centrally located and has high traffic like in front of the student dining room, inside a student center, or on the campus plaza. Work out the timeline, including time for exams and padding, to make sure you have enough time to get it done at a reasonable pace before setting a date.

• Where can you get a digital camera?

It’s important that the photos are high-quality, which means taken by a decent quality digital camera (not an iPhone), focused on the person and poster (not fuzzy or focused on the background), and front-lit (no sun or other strong light behind the subject). While you don’t need a professional photographer to take photos, having someone who knows something about photography always helps.

• How are you going to promote the photo shoot?

There are lots of ways to get the word out and this is a great area to brainstorm and get feedback on from key leaders in other student networks. The more you can use whatever they use to notify their group, the better. Some ideas are:

• Create a flyer to post around campus • Create a Facebook page and/or event • Have the student networks send an email to their list • Go on the student radio show • Have an article written on it or do an op-ed in the student news outlets

We recommend creating a Facebook page for your campus because it’s an easy way to keep people informed and engaged before and after the photo shoot. For example, when you send out an email to a student network notifying them of the photo shoot, you can include a link to the Facebook page for them to like. Also you can assign the key leaders from each student network as admin to invite their friends to like the page, which is also highly effective. It’ll attract trolls whose comments you can document to show how sexism is indeed alive and on this campus. After you document it, you can still delete and ban them from your Facebook page according to your comments policy.

• What materials do you need to purchase for the photo shoot?

Minimally, you’ll need thick markers and something to write on. We recommend buying a couple 3 ft x 2 ft dry erase boards because they’re large and reusable. But you can also use large pieces of paper or poster paper. Just make sure it’s large enough so that if someone has a long sentence, you can still read what it says in the photo. You will also need some big posters advertising the photo shoot at your booth and nearby pointing people to your booth. You can definitely do more to decorate the booth with but that’s optional.


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• Where are you going to showcase the posters?

Minimally, Everyday Feminism will post the poster photos on our website, Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest. You can also create your own Facebook page for your campus poster campaign where you can post the photos. You can also try showing the hard copy prints of the photos where students share their artwork like at student centers or art centers.

Now that you have a rough outline of the timeline, steps, and budget, see if it’s realistic or not and adjust accordingly.

!4) Fundraise.

You’re probably going to need some money to at least purchase materials for the photo shoot itself. Reach out to people from the relevant different academic departments, student groups, and campus programs to see if they can chip in some money for this campaign.

Ideally they’d already be involved and have agreed to promote the campaign to their network. So it makes sense to ask them for some funding if they have a budget. If not, meet them in-person to help build that relationship and make sure to keep following up via email until you get a definitive answer.

Everyday Feminism can also provide you feminist pride bumper stickers and buttons at a bulk discount rate to sell at the booth. In order to minimize cost to you, Everyday Feminism would send you the products for free and after the photo shoot, you ship us back any unsold products.

This means you don’t end up paying for any products you couldn’t sell. And the only cost to selling them is a small shipping fee for sending back unsold products to Everyday Feminism. You can check out these products at our Feminist Pride Store.

!5) Discuss how to deal with backlash.

Doing a feminist poster campaign can raise a lot of controversy and backlash on your campus. It’s to be expected and welcomed (tough as that is!).

Feminism questions society’s assumptions and social norms, which is challenging and intimidating for lots of people – for both men and women. So it can quickly put people on the defensive and focused on smearing feminism.

And all this does is prove why feminism is needed! For example, you’ll probably get a lot of comments like “go back to the kitchen!” Would anyone tell a black student to “go pick me some cotton!” and have lots of other students laughing about it? Probably not but why is “go make me a sandwich!” funny then?

Document these attacks and use these attacks as proof of sexism and reasons for continuing the conversation and changing campus culture after the photo shoot.

Now does that mean the backlash is fun or nice? Obviously not, especially when it comes from people you care about like your partner, friends, family members and people in power like professors and administrators.


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It’s tough for sure and it’s important to create space in the organizing process for the core team to share. Think of constructive ways of engaging in a conversation with someone who is uninformed but open to learning as well as knowing when to just walk away if it’s not a good faith conversation.

Everyday Feminism has a number of articles to help you with this ranging from how to talk about privilege, how to focus on the problematic behavior and not someone’s character, and how to take care of yourself while dealing with backlash.

!6) Prom ote the poster cam paign!

After you’ve confirmed the plan with others involved, move into action! Here are some tips: • Make sure your core team members are clear on what they’re responsible for. It’s

often better to assign a single promotion strategy to a single person who can make sure it goes from start to finish and can report out on the progress to the core team.

• Time the different promotion strategies within the same block of time. Depending on

how much promotion you’re doing, you probably don’t want to earlier than 2 weeks prior to the photo shoot. Repetition is key and memories are short.

!7) Have the photo shoot!

It’s the big day! Minimally, make sure you have a: • Table to hold materials • Markers and materials to write on • Email sign up sheet to notify people of when their posters are online and future

updates • Copies of a list of examples of other poster statements to help them brainstorm • Large posters advertising the booth • Photographer(s) and camera(s) • Large open space for a line of people wanting to do posters!

Other items you can have available at the booth to both make it more engaging and provide more resources are:

• Local and campus resources around sexual assault, dating violence, student groups, and other programs to share

• Copies of relevant Everyday Feminism articles to give out • Everyday Feminism’s feminist pride bumper stickers and buttons to sell • A popular student musical group performing to draw more people • An open discussion or question and answer session around feminism

!8) Showcase the posters.

Now that you have so many awesome posters, you can choose where you want to showcase them. Minimally you’ll need to add the “Why I’m an Everyday Feminist” logo to each photo and share them with Everyday Feminism via a DropBox folder.

Everyday Feminism will add your photos to the site, Facebook, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Once we’ve added them, you can notify people that it’s up so they can tag themselves in Facebook and share their photo with others.


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Other options mentioned above are posting them on your Facebook page if you have one or showing hard copy photos as a student art display.

!9) Continue talking about fem inism and take action!

Now that you’ve finished the photo campaign, there’s no need to stop there. This poster campaign is meant to start the discussion around feminism and how it’s relevant to people’s everyday lives.

Here’s some ideas to keep the conversation going and taking action in your campus:

• Host a follow-up discussion or panel to discuss the reaction to the poster campaign and what it means about the campus culture

• Facilitate discussions exploring the feelings and thinking behind the backlash with those who found the campaign controversial

• Have discussions what feminism is about and how it can support people in their everyday life

• Organize discussions between the different identity-based groups about the role of intersectionality and inclusiveness in their work

• Contact your campus news or local media outlets about how the poster campaign went and your experience organizing it

• Collaborate with different student art groups to use music, theater, and visual arts as way to challenge society’s myths and social norms

• Organize around campus policies that need to be changed, such as response to sexual assault reports or acts of sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia

• Alert students of local, state, and federal advocacy efforts affecting marginalized groups and how to get involved

!Conclusion

We hope this guide has gotten you both excited about the potential impact of the poster campaign as well as helped clarify what steps you need to take. We will be expanding upon this guide with a webpage linking to different resources and relevant Everyday Feminism articles for each step.

We probably didn’t think of everything so if you have any suggestions to improve this guide, please let us know. Please remember Everyday Feminism is here to support your poster campaign. So feel free to email us at [email protected].

Thank you again for being such a great feminist and acting to create a more respectful, inclusive, supportive community on your campus.

feminist poster campaign guide - everyday feminism · how to organize a feminist poster campaign -...

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