Category: couch gag
How to run a subvertisement workshop
One of our former interns, Eeva Kemppainen, now works in Helsinki for the pro-Fair Trade NGO Eettisen kaupan puolesta (Pro Ethical Trade Finland). In 2014, she published a paper in the Finnish journal Natura about ways in which she tries to engage students in humorous critiques of consumption and advertising. They examine, then cut up, rearrange and/or scribble on magazine adverts. They try to subvert their messages so that the information that they hide is made visible. What they produce are what’s called subvertisments. Here Eeva describes how she organises subvertisement workshops, and showcases some of the work that students have produced.
Figure 1: An example of a student-produced subvertisment: rearranging kids in an H&M advert to show connections between who makes and wears their clothes
‘Great to hear from you’: guest post by ftt intern Aidan Waller
T-shirt: ‘Made in Thailand’
It’s great to hear from former students who took the Exeter Geography module that creates so much of our site’s contents. A few weeks ago, we heard from Aidan Waller. He graduated in 2011, and worked as an intern when we were designing and ordering our shopping bags, and getting the site ready for its opening. He was in Thailand, doing some business, when following things came to mind. Here’s what Aidan wrote (published with his permission!).
Whilst travelling through the north of Thailand I stayed in the old capital of the north, Chiang Mai for a week. Whilst in the city I stumbled across a small back street shop with a big dayglo hand drawn sign saying “T-shirts 100 baht”. That caught my eye instantly, brilliant cheap T-shirts, I’d been looking for some for a while now and this place looked perfect.
Our 3rd #followtheteachers blog post: from Finland
The Geographies of Material Culture module that I took at Exeter University in my Erasmus year triggered a fascination about trade justice education and culture jamming. Quite an effect? Yes… and let me tell where this has led.
I’m one of the interns who helped to develop the followthethings.com website. I also worked with the site’s #followtheteachers group. My Masters thesis at the University of Helsinki focused on creative teaching of commodity geographies, young people’s geographies and culture jamming – a research field in which academics are narrowing school-university-NGO-gaps. My aim was to introduce these mindboggling ideas in Finland.
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