Exhibition

For our exhibition we decided to march through town with placards and a board full of photographs which would then be placed under Eastgate clock. We kept the march secret from everyone so that we could make an impact on the day.
There are eight placards all together and so we took a placard each and put our favourite A3 photograph on one side with a poster from that march on the other side. The remaining three placards had the remaining three posters from the other protests on them.
 The board was laid out to mimic the style of a charity photo board, such as the one seen below.

The photographs were arranged with images of the protest in the centre and the photographs of the public reaction around the edges with their faces looking inwards.

We also made t-shirts in the style of protesters home made t-shirts. each of us matched our t-shirt to the placard we had made. My placard and t-shirt were for FAIR DEAL FOR OVER 50'S. On the back we wrote quotes from what people had been shouting at us from the street so that mine read "What about the over 60's?"

On the day of the exhibition we hid behind the cathedral until just after 9.30 when we were supposed to be exhibiting, before marching down the street chanting "WHAT DO WE WANT?", "AN EXHIBITION!", "WHEN DO WE WANT IT?", "NOW!"

When our lecturer saw us he came out to join us and marched with us. Under the clock we arrange the board in the middle, leaning against the wall and stood the placards up around the edges. The public were also interested in the exhibition and many came over to see what we were doing and talk to us about the work.

Third Protest

Our third and final protest was planned for a Saturday. We had been advertising and publicising the event as much as possible in the run up and as a result we had a good turn out. Unfortunately the weather was awful and as a result the photographs taken that day were quite poor quality due to the camera lens getting so wet.
Our first cause was suggested by a bus driver, "LESS HOURS FOR JOHN THE BUS DRIVER". We were already getting lots of attention just by carrying the placards into town that day and, particularly because there were lots of younger people around, we had a lot more things shouted out at us as we marched. One man wanted to know who John was but we just continued chanting and marching.
When we reached the Cross there was a busker who did not take kindly to our protesting. The protest was changed to "DON'T PROTEST WITHOUT A REASON" and I photographed the next leg as we made our way up towards the town hall.

As they were marching and member of our group were joining us in a flash mob style two ladies also joined. This was a great result as it was what we had been aiming for when we decided to use a flash mob style approach to the protests.

The group continued to draw attention as they chanted outside the town hall.

The final part of the protest was "DON'T STOP ME IN THE STREET"t, suggested by one passer by  who was stopped for a suggestion. This chant caused a stir as we marched through town with people shouting things such as "excuse me, could I just stop you". At one point a police car pulled up and wound down a window but, after reading the posters, they drove away.

By the end of the protests everyone was soaking wet and part of our plan to pull in more people was to suggest going to the pub together afterwards. As we made our way to the pub we decided to chant "WE'RE GOING TO THE PUB" with blank placards.

 We picked up lots of people following behind us as we walked with a group of children chanting "WE'RE COMING WITH YOU". It was like a scene from a modern day pied piper!