Sunday 8 March 2009

mini protest banner #1


I have been making mini banners on and off for the last few months and they have gradually formed a little pile in my craft suitcase (like Mary Poppin's bag but better!;p). I finally took a day off work last week- I am owed 152 hours off but have too much work to do to take them off- so I put up a few of my banners.

This was my first sneaky guerilla crafting hehe. It says 'Inequality = Conflict'. I made it last month but decided to put it up in Liverpool Street Station, London last week because there has been a bit of an incident there recently: the Police blocked off this a few weeks ago for an advertising agency to film a flashmob for a company. However, soon after that an activist group wanted to do a flashmob there too but the police stopped them= inequality which led to a lot of tension and worries that a small riot might happen.

This banner is close to my heart because I grew up in the fourth most deprived area in the UK which happened to be on the edge of a city centre. The majority of our community grew up in council houses watching expensive luxury apartments being build in the city centre, see flashy sports cars speed down our main road while we had one of the lowest rate of cars per head of the population in the UK. This caused tension and understandably made many of our residents and especially young people angry and therefore wanting to lash out.

It cant be a coincidence that South Africa is the most violent country outside of wartorn countries and also happens to have the biggest gap between rich and poor in the world.

My worry is that we are following South Africa and being more and more violent, angry and torn apart.

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