Tag: Tell a different story

Jonas Salk Around The World

Objective:

With this Jonas Salk sketch we would like to encourage you and as many other people as possible to print out the sketch and take a picture of Jonas Salk in front of a landmark, a place special to you or a beautiful place in your surroundings. Much like the extremely successful Flat Stanley project more than 25 years ago. By spreading the word on social media, you can encourage others to do the same, help carry on Salk’s legacy, and remind people of a role model who prioritized people’s well-being over profit.

The Project:

We have depicted Jonas Salk in his role as a role model in vaccine development and distribution in a cartoon-like drawing. This eye-catching and charming design is intended to help spread Salk’s scientific and philosophical spirit and create a distinctive recognition value.

STRATEGIES:
TRY THIS:

Make your own Flat Salk and help him visit your favorite places.

Share it on social media #FreeTheVaccine #PeoplesVaccine

What worked?

All the wonderfully kind and human values of Jonas Salk can be perfectly reflected in a cartoon-like style.

Other Notes:

1) Print the sketch
2) Glue it on cardboard or thicker paper
3) Cut out the outline of Jonas Salk
4) Take a picture with the cutout in front of a landmark, a place important to you, or a beautiful place in your neighborhood
5) Share the photo on social media and get more people to do the same

    A set of instructions exists on how to make this work
  • An original object can be provided for exhibition

Links:

Reflections from Calvin Dunker

What was the process/journey of creating this work?

Since other drawings in this cartoon-like style had already been created by unrelated projects, all that was needed was an agreement on the elements that would appear. The many iconic images of Salk as a scientist during the successful approval of the vaccine served as a rough template.

What skills or perspectives did the collaborators bring to this?

Mareike Bielok was responsible for the drawing and the underlying cartoon-like style. Calvin Dunker prepared the rough concept and the elements to be displayed.

What were some of the responses to this work?

Very positive feedback and already first photos in front of landmarks.

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?

Produce an animation series with cartoon Jonas Salk traveling around the world. Organize airplane banners covering all the beaches in the world. Pay very famous people who can’t be convinced by the message behind the image to share pictures of themselves, the Jonas Salk cutout and famous landmarks on their social media channels.

About this project
Creators:
  • Calvin Dunker
  • Mareike Bielok

March, 2021

Image/graphic, Print

Germany, Munster

3024 x 4032 pixels

Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

Download Original/High-Resolution File: Salk-.png, Salk-Outline.png

GIFted – How Jonas Salk solved (another) pandemic

Objective:

This series of GIFS aims to tell his story, bring it to (animated and digital) life and bring the gigantic legacy of vaccine titan Jonas Salk into the current debate

The Project:

Jonas Salk is a hero of vaccine development. He helped bring the polio vaccine to live. When he was asked about who should own the patent on this discovery, he answered “Well the people I would say – Could you patent the sun”.

This series of GIFS aims to tell his story, bring it to (animated and digital) life and bring the gigantic legacy of vaccine titan Jonas Salk into the current debate

STRATEGIES:
TRY THIS:

Share it on social media. #FreeTheVaccine #PeoplesVaccine

Make your own!

What worked?

Just how amazingly Jonas Salk’s portraits are GIFable. Very successful winks etc.

    An original object can be provided for exhibition
  • Original files can be provided for exhibition

Reflections from Peter GIFy

What was the process/journey of creating this work?

Extensive search for GIF making software, finding images of Jonas Salk, being creative.

What skills or perspectives did the collaborators bring to this?

Very contemporay knowledge on GIF making browser software

What were some of the responses to this work?

Likes and retweets.

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?

Buying aire time on billboards at NYC times square,
striking a deal with JCDecaux to display these GIFS as digital posters on all bus stations across the world.

If someone else were going to make/use/do something like this, what advice would you give them?

Try different texts, be more provocative, maybe consider TikTok or (oldschool) a flipbook?

About this project
Creators:
  • Peter GIFy

March, 2021

Online/web thing

Germany, Berlin

400×400

Public Domain

Download Original/High-Resolution File: salk_squint_text.gif, sad_text_2.gif, 6326404A-8416-11EB-B757-16F91FFA6CF3.gif, photos.gif, 05901904-8413-11EB-A066-1635AF64B68B.gif, 91351398-8412-11EB-8305-0E2C7966F80F.gif

UCLA Graphics

Objective:

Encourage conversation around the vaccine and how UCLA can help make that happen.

The Project:

Poster featuring the UCLA Bear mascot and a mock up of a magazine cover to encourage UCLA to help Free the Vaccine.

STRATEGIES:
TRY THIS:

Make it specific to your community.

What worked?

Strongly featured UCLA.

About this project
Creators:
  • Crane Squad

December, 2020

Image/graphic

United States, Los Angeles

10inchesx14inches

Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

Link to Original or High-Res file

    Original files can be provided for exhibition

Reflections from Crane Squad

Protect everyone we can for everyone we couldn’t

Objective:

Find a visually compelling way to share a powerful message that other Free the Vaccine participants wrote. The text was initially drafted to motivate Columbia University to sign the Open Covid Pledge but we realized that it could also help a broader audience recognize the importance of making Covid tests, treatments, and vaccines as widely accessible as possible.

The Project:

Printmakers working with the Center for Artistic Activism designed this poster based on text that other Free the Vaccine members wrote in summer 2020.

STRATEGIES:
TRY THIS:

Print it and post it.

Design it differently.

Share it on social media. #FreeTheVaccine #PeoplesVaccine

What worked?

Building on someone else’s ideas instead of starting from scratch – it’s a great example of Free the Vaccine’s iterative process.

Other Notes:

There are four variations in this series of Risograph prints. Each version was printed in an edition of 50 at Eureka! House in Kingston, NY. They were created to travel with the physical version of this exhibit.

    An original object can be provided for exhibition

Reflections from Free the Vaccine for Covid-19

About this project
Creators:
  • Willa Goettling
  • Mary Tremonte

November, 2020

Print

United States, Poughkeepsie

11 x 17 inches

Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

Covid Conversations

Objective:

Our greater objective was to get NYU to sign the Open Covid Pledge. We identified a target at NYU and thought including something creative in an email to her would make it more likely for her to engage with the email and respond to us.

The Project:

Improv conversations with COVID-19. In particular: a concerned person wanted COVID-19 to go away, so she talked to someone at a university that was doing COVID-19 research, asking them to open up their licensing so that the pandemic would end sooner. The university rep called their big pharma contact and both were skeptical. But then the Plague Doctor appeared and convinced everyone to agree to the Open Covid Pledge.

STRATEGIES:
TRY THIS:

Make one!

What worked?

It worked! We included an image from our action in our email to our target and she wrote back right away saying she would be happy to meet with us.

Other Notes:

We knew from research that our target had a background in more creative ways of achieving major health aims.

    Original files can be provided for exhibition

Links:

Reflections from Rachel Karp

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 were most taken with the image of talking to COVID-19 and think this could build into a social media campaign of people talking to COVID about how universities/pharmaceutical corporations/health organizations/government entities can make COVID go away–in a way that is safe, equitable, and accessible to all.

If someone else were going to make/use/do something like this, what advice would you give them?

Things we found that were useful: the person playing COVID-19 changing their profile picture to COVID-19 and turning their camera off, Zoom backgrounds for as many other participants as possible, simple costumes, having an overall outline of what we would say, and trying to move through that outline pretty quickly (because otherwise the improv can get really bogged down). We wanted to make something short–maybe 60 seconds–but we never got it below about 3 minutes. Also, we learned after the fact that using the Zoom recording function doesn’t work because it doesn’t capture the profile image of someone with their camera off, so record through e.g. QuickTime or something that can capture a screen to make sure you get the key image of COVID-19 talking!

About this project
Creators:

October, 2020

Image/graphic, Online/web thing, Performance, Video

United States, Brooklyn

2298 x 1349

Public Domain

Download Original/High-Resolution File: Hawks-Action.png

Dr. Salk’s Ghost Returns to Free the Vaccine

Objective:

1) Create irresistible imagery for a media campaign to work towards our larger goal of having the University of Pittsburgh to Sign the Open Covid Pledge. 2) Raise awareness about Dr. Salk’s connection to vaccine research and open Intellectual property to the greater public. 3) Create a fun and timely halloween-centered work of creative activism

The Project:

Invoking the ghost of vaccine researcher Dr. Jonas Salk, we created humorous gravestones that echo his perspective about vaccine patents when asked about the polio vaccine he developed in Pittsburgh – “could you patent the sun?” Then we dressed up as Dr.Salk and distributed these gravestones (with linked QR codes to learn more) all over The University of Pittsburgh campus where current COVID-19 vaccine research is being done to encourage the same openness and support for a peoples vaccine that is the university’s legacy.

STRATEGIES:
TRY THIS:

Share it on social media. #FreeTheVaccine #PeoplesVaccine

Channel the Ghost of Salk in your community.

 

What worked?

The creative community process! As a lab, the Juncos worked across different cities with different backgrounds to make this happen. Once we did this action we were empowered to keep going and this led to many more actions and activities in our efforts to get the University of Pittsburgh to sign the Open Covid Pledge.

About this project
Creators:

October, 2020

Image/graphic, Installation/Intervention, Online/web thing, Performance

United States, Pittsburgh

various

Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

Link to Original or High-Res file

    A set of instructions exists on how to make this work
  • An original object can be provided for exhibition
  • Original files can be provided for exhibition
  • The work can be reproduced on site with instructions (provided)

Reflections from Joseph Amodei

What were some of the responses to this work?

People were really excited about the halloween timeliness of this work! It even spurred collaboration with another lab across the country (where Salk’s actual gravesite is) and resulted in more exciting imagery and proliferation of this people’s vaccine ethos.

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 there is no people’s vaccine next year (as in no promise to share the IP and the manufacturing technology of current vaccines with the rest of the world for free), then I would make the scale of this 1000x this first iteration to really draw attention to the harm that vaccine profiteering causes to the wider world outside of the USA and other wealthy (via extracted labor and colonialism) countries. In short, to continue to summon and make proud the spirit of Dr.Salk.

I Got The People’s Vaccine

Objective:

Pressure McGill University to sign the Open Covid Pledge

The Project:

We designed this as an update to our initial Free The Vaccine Tattoo idea (linked below).

STRATEGIES:
TRY THIS:

Paste it onto a selfie and share on social media. #FreeTheVaccine #PeoplesVaccine

Turn it into a temporary tattoo.

Make it a snapchat filter.

What worked?

It can become a cheap, easily reproducible, physical object!

About this project
Creators:
  • Olivia Bonardi

October, 2020

Image/graphic

Canada, Montreal

1,500 x1,500 pixels

Public Domain

Download Original/High-Resolution File: I-got-the-peoples-vaccine.png

    Original files can be provided for exhibition

Links:

Big Heart

Objective:

The objective was to appeal to the University of Queensland to sign the Open Covid Pledge.

The Project:

Big heart was a stop motion animation made to represent the information that 13% of the world’s population has already pre-purchased over half of the world’s supply of promised covid vaccines and also that as public funding goes into research of the vaccine, we as citizens have a right to have a voice. This information was packaged up to appeal to The University of Queensland who we were targeting in our objectives.

STRATEGIES:
TRY THIS:

Share it on social media. #FreeTheVaccine #PeoplesVaccine

Make it specific to your community.

What worked?

I think the work found a playful way to represent the ‘of the moment’ statistical information. It attempted to appeal to the sense of ‘doing the moral/right thing’ for the University.

About this project
Creators:
  • Tessa Marshall
  • Greg Giannis
  • zan griffith

October, 2020

Video

Australia, Melbourne

one minute

Public Domain

Link to Original or High-Res file

Other Notes:


This work was an extension of an idea from season one. In season one Tessa and Greg created a giant syringe playing on the idea of Australia’s love of big things.

    Original files can be provided for exhibition

Reflections from zan griffith

What was the process/journey of creating this work?

This work was playing on the idea of Australia’s love of big tourist icons. In season one a big syringe was built with this in mind. Stop motion was a useful way to reach an audience when you are in lockdown in Melbourne.

What skills or perspectives did the collaborators bring to this?

Tessa creates a podcast each week where she highlights the most relevant and up to date covid vaccine information. This was where i learnt the statistic i represented. Greg had compiled information that related to the Australian situation which highlighted that over $4 billion was used for covid vaccine development. I had done a few stop motions before and love to tell a story in short grabs.

What were some of the responses to this work?

It was posted on instagram and a few comments suggested that it was useful information. We never heard back from the University of Queensland who we sent emails to with the animation.

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?

I love the idea of having a stop motion takeover day on social websites where all the participants of free the vaccine have a go at a stop motion with a free the vaccine message and we flood socials. i imagine some of the most successful stop motions would come from those who had never done one before.

If someone else were going to make/use/do something like this, what advice would you give them?

Have fun with it and treat it like an experiment.

Funk Rally Lab Coats

Objective:

The lab coats were part of a larger initiative part of the DC funk rally. The lab coats gave the impression of the scientific community attending the rally in support of health equity and the use of research for the public good. The aspect of color on the lab coats added to the “fun” and “fresh” element of the Funk Rally allowing for the rally to be more lighthearted.

The Project:

These are labcoats inspired by the 60s and 70s for the Washington D.C. Funk Rally held in October of 2020. The lab coats are adorned with flowers, health equity quotes, and slogans pushing the University of Maryland to support COVID-19 vaccine equity.

STRATEGIES:
TRY THIS:

Design your own lab coat.

Make it specific to your community.

What worked?

The color of the lab coat really added to the overall aesthetic of the funk rally and made for good pictures that are then used for publicizing the event and our message.

Other Notes:

The Funk Rally was held in Washington D.C. in October of 2020 to not only mourn the lives lost to COVID-19 but to celebrate the concept of life and ensuring that the living is able to get equitable access to the COVID-19 vaccine in order to end the pandemic for all.

    An original object can be provided for exhibition

Reflections from Tayyiaba Farooq

What was the process/journey of creating this work?

It was a fun and interesting learning experience for someone that does not have a background in art. I was able to draw inspiration from the art style of the 60s and 70s to create the flowers and color choice of the slogans and quotes used.

What skills or perspectives did the collaborators bring to this?

The collaborators served as amazing models for the labcoats and brought them to life. The labcoats wouldn’t be anything without the people to wear them.

What were some of the responses to this work?

All responses were really positive to the labcoats especially as a larger part of the Funk Rally. It added color to the rally and the pictures that were taken. Adding to the aesthetic and adding to the overall color and mood of the Free the Vaccine Campaign.

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?

I would create a larger photo mural with individuals who are doctors and scientists who are advocates for the campaign. Doing indiviudal profiles on these people, telling their stories and their motivations will further add color and dtail to the campaign.

If someone else were going to make/use/do something like this, what advice would you give them?

Always plan out how you want to execute your idea before going into the final product. Going through the planning process further enhances the idea to be executed.

About this project
Creators:
  • Tayyiaba Farooq
  • Maanasa Gurram
  • Manahel Zahid
  • Victoria Carter
  • Alvina Pan

October, 2020

Fabric

United States, Washington

7 lab coats

Public Domain

D.C. Funk Rally

Objective:

To educate the public and advocate for a People’s Vaccine.

The Project:

A rally to mourn loss, celebrate life, and encourage our institutions to do better and provide a People’s Vaccine.

STRATEGIES:
TRY THIS:

Make it specific to your community.

Organize one where you live.

What worked?

Images from the Funk Rally made it into national and international news.

Other Notes:

We started with a New Orleans Jazz-style funeral to mourn the overwhelming loss of life and then transitioned to a festive rally inspired by DC-based Go-Go music and 1970s fashion.

    Original files can be provided for exhibition

Links:

Reflections from Tayyiaba Farooq

What was the process/journey of creating this work?

The Funk Rally came out a need to represent the grim seriousness of the campaign and Trump’s failure are president to adequately combat the pandemic while also painting a picture of hope for the future. At first organizers had wanted to keep the tone very serious and somber, but together with other ally organizations we can up with theming of Funk and imagery from the 70s. The rally was also adapted from a traditional New Orleans Jazz Funeral where they do not only mourn the end, but celebrate the very concept of life. The inspiration of this went in to the color of parade decorations, the lab coats with flowers and inspirational quotes, as well as the displaying local music culture. Altogether we were able to create something that was full of life and solidarity for our community. The approach we had taken to demanding action on ending the pandemic and ensuring an accessible vaccine was unique to our rally and was derived from the principles of creative activism. This out of the box approach had really gotten the attention of people that would have not otherwise cared. It was a great example of ally organizations coming together to make something positive, and from my perspective really launched the idea of vaccine accessibility at the University of Maryland.

What were some of the responses to this work?

People were able to dance in the street, create a beautiful mural at the end, and receive positive attention from onlookers and those who featured us in the press. The imagery produced from the campaign is still being used, and just goes to show the impact this one event has had on the campaign at large.

About this project
Creators:
  • Free the Vaccine for Covid-19

October, 2020

Image/graphic, Performance

United States, Washington

Varies

Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

Link to Original or High-Res file