What skills or perspectives did the collaborators bring to this?
Because I am not a writer it was great to work with others who could come up with a pithy message and then I could play with it for different uses. There is a poster that contains this message with a longer explanation so this, a twitter graphic, and the poster can be used simoultaneously for greater impact.
Create a way for individuals to show their support for the Open Covid Pledge, build public support for the campaign.
The Project:
An image people can post on social media to encourage others to support the Open Covid Pledge. It underscores that COVID meds should be considered a public good.
What skills or perspectives did the collaborators bring to this?
This image came out of a big exchange of ideas in the DogOwl squad on the Salk Labs forum. I had been using the tag line “Public. Good.” for a poster, and Fiona was working with the rejoinder about how a vaccine alone can’t end the pandemic but a free one can. Rebecca put them together and added a syringe. We had a great exchange about how to make the syringe look beneficial, not scary, which informed the choice of colors here and the decision to use the syringe to underline the key phrase.
Share it on social media. #FreeTheVaccine #PeoplesVaccine
Make a version for your target.
What worked?
I received many inquiries from fellow UCLA students on the campaign, with many of my friends and family members signing on as part of the BINGO game. I also saw reposts of the graphics from strangers on Instagram, broadening our overall outreach efforts.
From the infographic’s creation date on July 1st to today (July 25th), over 2 million new COVID cases have been reported globally, and almost 250,000 more deaths. Very shocking and further highlights the importance of the pledge and campaign.
A set of instructions exists on how to make this work
What skills or perspectives did the collaborators bring to this?
Because I am not a writer it was great to work with others who could come up with a pithy message and then I could play with it for different uses. There is a poster that contains this message with a longer explanation so this, a twitter graphic, and the poster can be used simoultaneously for greater impact.
Interpretive Statement
User Instructions
Print it and stick it!
Share it on social media. #FreeTheVaccine #PeoplesVaccine
The cartoon targets CureVac (a German biotechnology company working on a COVID-19 vaccine) to sign the Open COVID Pledge. It depicts the problem of access to a COVID-19 vaccine and shows ShareVac (in place of CureVac) coming in as a superhero solving the problem of access with the Open COVID Pledge.
People love it! Some people were confused at first, but the oddness of the cartoon has the power to draw people in.
What would be your next steps, building on this idea, if you had a million dollars and all the time and skills in the world?
We would love to work on an English version of both cartoon and website. Additionally we would like to provide the cartoon as a template for other groups and other targets.
The objective of this image was just to create a poster that could be used to gain support for the Free the Vaccine campaign.
The Project:
This image is a rectangular poster that has several colorful people in three lines across its length. The people are a very diverse group and depict multiple genders, ethnicities, races, ages, sizes, abilities, religion, and more. In the middle of the people is a blue box with the words “Who Doesn’t Deserve a Vaccine?” in large print. In smaller print is “Let’s give everyone equal access to a life saving COVID-19 vaccine!” In the bottom right corner are the words “#Freethevaccine.”
Share it on social media. #FreeTheVaccine #PeoplesVaccine
What worked?
We tried pairing other images with the question, “who doesn’t deserve a vaccine,” and this is the one that worked best. Photos got too specific – the cartoon felt like a better fit.
This image was created using canva.com, so all art work was pulled from this site.
Original files can be provided for exhibition
Reflections from Emilie Seibert
What would be your next steps, building on this idea, if you had a million dollars and all the time and skills in the world?
The next steps would be to further refine this image and then use it as a poster to put everywhere (billboards, subways, etc.). So people realize that EVERYONE deserves access to a vaccine.
This was a poster created to be used as a way to gain support for the Free the Vaccine campaign from the general public.
The Project:
This image is a red square poster. At the top in a darker red the words say “You wouldn’t pay for a hot dog twice…” The word twice is in a light pink for emphasis. Below those words is an image of a hot dog. Below the hot dog are more words in a dark red that say, “So why would you for a vaccine?” In the bottom right corner in a white cursive font is “#FreetheVaccine.”
Invite an Indiana University researcher whose lab is working on a COVID vaccine for young children, to pledge to license his work via the Open Covid Pledge.
The Project:
A 1-page comic illustrating why one Indiana University researcher should license his lab’s work via the Open Covid Pledge. We emailed it to him with a note about how much we admire his work and a recommendation for how to print the image.
It didn’t generate a response from the researcher, but the project helped me build my image-making skills, and I learned a lot about the software I used to create it. I’d never made a visual narrative like this before!
What skills or perspectives did the collaborators bring to this?
I made this drawing mostly independently – but it was inspired directly by a comic that one of the other groups drafted to send to researchers at the Salk Institute. Theirs also started with the famous quote from Dr. Salk. I liked their idea so I made a new and expanded version, tailored for a different researcher.
Activists from the Free the Vaccine project stage a photo to urge the university to adopt open licensing for COVID-19 research
Objective:
We wanted to raise awareness and create public spectacle as part of a larger aim of engaging with Columbia on many fronts in trying to have them sign the Open COVID Pledge. The groups we seek to reach in building our case of support for #FreeTheVaccine includes reaching out to students, professors, researchers, alumni, community members, and anyone else who might be interested in having Columbia act as a leader in the area of making any future vaccine research accessible to not only it’s communities, but to the broader public.
The Project:
Columbia’s Alma Mater Statue Dons Surgical Mask for an Accessible COVID-19 Vaccine
NEW YORK, NY, May 19, 2020 – Alma Mater, the “nourishing mother” of Columbia University’s student body, sported an oversized surgical mask, sash, and vaccine bottle this weekend, as the Class of 2020 graduates into a world transformed. The iconic 1903 bronze statue sent her students off with a simple message: “Be Well.”
Nearby statues of “Alma’s friend’s” were also decorated with signage in support of an accessible vaccine. These images were created and then distributed to a variety of media outlets.
We also created a how-to video to encourage other folks to don friendly statues with masks of support in their locations.
We pulled together all of our different strengths as a Lab, and got good public response to the in person intervention. We also created some fantastic images that have bolstered our reaching out to folks connected with Columbia and our digital presence in general.
We staged the scene to draw attention to a growing global campaign demanding open licensing arrangements for COVID-19 research and development efforts at universities worldwide. Such arrangements would help to ensure access to life-saving innovations developed with tax-payer funds. Columbia, located in the epicenter of the global pandemic, is one of the world’s foremost research institutions investigating vaccines and therapeutics to combat the virus.
A set of instructions exists on how to make this work
Original files can be provided for exhibition
The work can be reproduced on site with instructions (provided)
What was the process/journey of creating this work?
This project was the action that really cemented the relationship the Ligers share. We came together with different skills, backgrounds, and proximal locations to Columbia to make this project happen. It was fun, collaborative, and exciting!
What would be your next steps, building on this idea, if you had a million dollars and all the time and skills in the world?
We are talking about how to expand on this action in the fall! We would surround Alma Mater with a live counter of all those who have signed on with individual support in and around the Columbia community. This would take the form of some sort of giant mechanical object, or nightly projection-mapped interventions (all of course while Alma was wearing a mask).
Our larger objective was to get Indiana University to sign the Open Covid Pledge. With this image we wanted to initiate the conversation in a way that wouldn’t be overlooked as easily as a typical email might.
The Project:
This is a screen shot of a section of an email that we sent to leaders at Indiana University. First we designed images of hand-decorated facemasks that connected the Open Covid Pledge to IU values. We then photoshopped them onto the headshots of IU leaders we were emailing about the Open Covid Pledge. We paired the image with text that highlighted how IU had already embraced open licensing in the fight against COVID-19. We emphasized that for IU, signing the Open Covid Pledge would be “High Visibility, Low Risk.” The email included relevant hyperlinks and a brief introductory message.
These messages combined images and language that we’d been exploring in other contexts – here it really came together cohesively. Also, everyone we sent these images to responded to us (although these images might not be why that happened).
What was the process/journey of creating this work?
We initially wanted to do something that had a personal touch. We also wanted to connect signing the Open Covid Pledge to IU’s values and to celebrate a way that the university had already contributed to the open sharing of information related to the pandemic. An IU professor had designed an origami face mask and freely shared the pattern. We’d identified key IU values for a previous project, and we thought it might work well to put those values and a mention of the Open Covid Pledge on one of the origami masks.
It wasn’t feasible to send hand-painted face masks, so we came up with a digital alternative. Megan is a painter, so she made an image of the embellished masks. We considered just sending an image of the mask but decided instead to photoshop it onto the headshot of the person we were sending it to. That extra step made it more personal – and it’s hard to ignore a picture of your own face. By doing this we ended up making an image that envisioned the outcome we wanted – leaders at IU supporting the Open Covid Pledge.
We paired the image with some carefully written text – language that we hoped would be short enough that someone would read it, and language that made a clear case for why IU should adopt the Open Covid Pledge.
Another important factor here is that I’m a professor at IU – I sent the emails from my university address with a personalized note that explained that this was related to my scholarship. Even though this email didn’t make anyone immediately sign the pledge, we think it put the issue on a number of people’s radars and helped open up a conversation.
