To make graphics that use the universities styles, fonts, colors to be shared on social media and via emails and used to put pressure on university decisionmakers to sign the Open COVID Pledge.
The Project:
A series of graphics intended for social media and emails that ask students, alumni, and faculty to put pressure on university decisionmakers to sign the Open COVID Pledge.
We sent emails to decision makers with the future social media post, and the TTO office responded, still waiting to hear their response to our AUTM email reply.
Playing on the long standing sports rivalry between schools, this animation was created as part of a social media push to encourage UCLA to sign the Open Covid Pledge before USC.
The Project:
Images of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and University of Southern California (USC) mascots, made entirely of cut paper, are animated to depict the UCLA Bruin kicking the USC Trojan out of frame, and then ringing the Victory Bell.
The cut paper elements were assembled and photographed by Kaity, and Vivian added background, digitized the animation, and formatted the animation for various social media platforms.
Original files can be provided for exhibition
What skills or perspectives did the collaborators bring to this?
Vivian has been very encouraging of the idea of stop motion throughout the lab, so it was a true collaboration between the two of us to make this happen. I think we both are pleased with the results.
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.
We’re building on Dolly Parton’s $1million donation to support COVID-19 research at Vanderbilt University. To get their attention, to educate them on the Open Covid Pledge, and to add pressure for them to sign the pledge, we chose to produce a viral music video parody of the song “Jolene” by Dolly Parton.
We now want to encourage all universities to sign the Open Covid Pledge, so we are currently discussing the “next challenge”: how to create a full-length video in a way that inspires even more people to get involved and ask universities to make a meaningful change.
The Project:
The #JoleneVaccineChallenge is an interactive project, initially intended to target Dolly Parton and Vanderbilt University. However, with the success of the project, we are now targeting universities all over the world! (Read more under “Objective” below.)
We are making a music video parody of the song “Jolene” by Dolly Parton. Do you know the song? The chorus lyrics, “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene…” have been adapted to “Vaccine, Vaccine, Vaccine, Vaccine.” Check out the video link to see how we rewrote ALL of the lyrics.
The challenge, i.e. the “interactive” element of this project, is twofold. First, we invited all members of the Free the Vaccine campaign to help us make a “trailer” for the music video. The video link here is the trailer, which consists of just the first chorus and verse to the song. At the end of the trailer, we challenge viewers to send videos of THEM lip-syncing/dancing to the song. We made a downloadable track and supplied the lyrics to the whole song for viewers.
Record your own lip sync and share it on social media. #JoleneVaccineChallenge
Perform it in your own community.
What worked?
Without Occupy Democrats having shared our video on Facebook, we would have had a MUCH harder time going viral.
Other Notes:
Thousands of people across several social media platforms watched and shared our video. We are continuing to call and email Vanderbilt and Dolly Parton representatives to remind them of our video and its growing number of likes/views.
Based on the initial response to our trailer, we’ve decided that our full-length music video should now target universities all over the world. Our trailer features members of Free the Vaccine from many different countries, emphasizing Parton’s and Vanderbilt’s global impact. In continuing this theme, for the full-length music video, we plan to have a few singers/dancers wearing not only Parton costumes or Vanderbilt t-shirts, but also, for example, t-shirts from other universities.
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)
We have gone viral! That in itself is a huge response to our work.
As far as viewers accepting the challenge and submitting videos… So far we have only received a handful of submissions. (It’s not too late to send one yourself!) We are currently outlining our schedule for releasing the full-length music video (probably during the first week of December) as well as three “promotional” videos between now and then; three videos (at least) to help boost our views/likes on social media.
Unfortunately, Dolly Parton and Vanderbilt representatives have not been responding to our emails and calls.
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?
If we had a million dollars, we could probably think of a million ideas! Our team is always bustling around “what if we…?!” Off the top of my head, we would project the final full-length music video onto Dolly Parton’s house(s) and Vanderbilt’s buildings. We discussed the idea of – when COVID cases and social distancing measures relax – a march around Nashville in Dolly Parton costumes. But, why just in Nashville!? Why stop there?! And wouldn’t it be awesome to have the video produced in every language?! We have also discussed how to get famous people to lip-sync/dance for our full-length music video.
The Stick Me. sticker is for people to stick on each other, like playing tag. If stuck with a sticker, they have to come to the table to find out why. Once someone is ‘stuck’ and find out about signing on to the Open Covid Pledge as an individual they will ideally sign it, get a sticker that says ‘I stuck it to _______’ and fill in the blank and add to a poster to visually represent those that have signed the Open Covid Pledge. The last step is a selfie prop where they can fill the university or org they stuck it to and share on social media and tag the university and others to encourage them to sign on. They can take some ‘stick me for free’ stickers to put around different places to encourage people to go to the website and see what it’s all about.
Objective:
This could be for a physical action, a series of stickers and posters that encourage people to interact with each other. Great for a tabling event.
Ideally the success of this would be people having fun, being included, and feeling like they have the power to make a difference by signing the pledge.
Other Notes:
This work had input from the Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 group in general, and C4AA for their inspirational how to get people to act videos!
What was the process/journey of creating this work?
This one took me a little bit to get to. I had tried another interactive piece, but was a bit too involved. After stepping back, watching the C4AA videos, this just kind of came to me. Being able to bounce ideas off others in the group helped, hearing what was needed and wanted allowed me to think more creatively, I wasn’t thinking about this just for me.
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.
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
As a project, Goodnight Stories for Rebel Scientists aimed both to start conversations with scientists and incentivize them to sign the Open COVID Pledge. As an interesting project/piece of art the book was meant to captivate the attention of scientists we reached out to. Then it aimed to incentivize them by offering recognition of their work by including them among a collection of other important figures, IF they signed the OCP or worked in some other way to free the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Project:
Goodnight Stories for Rebel Scientists is the beginning of a book that tells the tales of scientists and access to medicines champions who worked diligently to end the COVID-19 pandemic in a just and equitable way. The book is a series of square images. The front cover is dark blue with the title “Goodnight Stories for Rebel Scientists” with drawn images of a syringe, the COVID-19 virus, an erlenmeyer flask, and a face wearing a mask. Following the cover are entries for two scientists, Hanneke Schuitemaker and Marion Koopmans. Each entry has a story written about the scientist and a portrait of them made by different artists. The last page of the book draft features an email written to the featured scientists asking for their help finishing their story in the book and to sign the Open COVID Pledge.
The project helped us get the attention of Marion Koopman’s assistant. It also brought us in contact with access to medicines champion Ellen ‘t Hoen who gave our group instrumental advice in carrying forward with the campaign and who will also be featured in the book.
The project was inspired by the book Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls which shares the stories and work of important women throughout time.
Original files can be provided for exhibition
Reflections from Fiona Davey
What skills or perspectives did the collaborators bring to this?
Each collaborator brought different skills from art, design, writing, and organizing.
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?
If we had a million dollars and all the time in the world we would turn this project into a printed book with entries of all the important figures in access to medicines. We’d also commission portraits for each entry and support artists around the world.
The objective of this poster was to clearly communicate the driving mission of the Free the Vaccine campaign to a wide audience and bring attention to the fact that a COVID-19 vaccine must be free & accessible in order for the pandemic to end. The poster also worked to serve as a call to action for viewers to sign their individual support to the Open COVID Pledge, adding global pressure to institutions to sign on as well.
The Project:
A black poster with an image of a syringe floating over a cartoon-like globe with the phrase “a vaccine won’t SAVE THE WORLD. A FREE ONE WILL.” in block white and pink letters. Underneath this image is a paragraph stating “Making sure the COVID-19 vaccine is free and accessible in all parts of the world is key to ending the pandemic. A vaccine alone won’t save us, but a free one will. Sign the Open COVID Pledge.” At the very bottom is a link in blue “freethevapcine.org/sign”.
In working with other FtV volunteers and feedback from activist Avram Finkelstein, I think that this poster was able to evolve into a final product that achieved communicating in a very precise way. The imagery and text also effectively connects with the emotional piece of feeling that the world is under threat and needs saving.
What was the process/journey of creating this work?
My squad (Seal-3) had been working to approach the virologist Hanneke Schuitemaker working to lead the vaccine initiative at Janssen Pharmaceuticals under Johnson and Johnson. While researching our protagonist, we came across an interview in which she said “treatments save lives, vaccines save populations”. Something about this phrasing really stuck in my head and so when we began to work on creating graphic designs combining images with concise phrases, I had already been thinking about the words and ideas juxtaposed around a vaccine as salvation. While attending one of our weekly meetings and upon hearing about this new mission, the phrase “A vaccine won’t save the world. A free one will.” just appeared in my mind. I began workshopping different ideas of imagery to combine with the phrase. After a lot of helpful feedback from other FtV volunteers and mentors, the poster came to the design we ended with.
What were some of the responses to this work?
There were some really exciting responses to this work including feedback from Avram Finkelstein that the phrase “A vaccine won’t save the world. A free one will.” was the gold standard for concise and clear communication.
