DC IAM AWARE: DESIGNING THE PROTECTED CHARACTERISTICS POSTERS
DC IAM: AWARE This year’s Dulwich College Identity Awareness Month (DC IAM) was focused on the theme ‘Aware,’ writes Nathalie Whittington
T he event launched with assemblies presented by students in Years 7 to13. They introduced the three main areas of awareness for the month: digital wellbeing; the protected characteristics; and LGBT+ Month. The quiz at the end of the assemblies highlighted how well the month’s theme of becoming more aware had begun, with the majority of the students getting the answers right! As Matthew Wu (Year 13), D&I prefect for LGBTQ+, said in the assembly, ‘allyship has never been more important. We see different things. We are making history. Therefore, I invite you to join us on this journey, to get yourself involved in the many DC IAM Aware events we have prepared, to learn, to discuss, and to appreciate. Even the smallest things we do can change the world.’
Our keynote guest speaker was the author Simon James Green. Having written over 10 books for children and young adults, he captivated the audience of Dulwich and SSLP students in the Wodehouse Library. He is best known for the humour and honesty with which he depicts the experience of queer young people. Simon’s work has been nominated or shortlisted for awards such as the YA Book Prize and Diverse Book Award, won the Bristol Teen Book Award, and his most recent novel, Gay Club !, is nominated for this year’s YOTO Carnegie Medal. A group of students also helped to create a series of informative posters around the nine protected character- istics. These were unveiled around the College campus – both in digital and printed versions. They invited us to reflect on our own protected characteristics and to em- pathise with those of others through suggested discussion points around each characteristic. Societies and academic subjects embraced the theme of the month through a series of activities, resources, talks and events. To capture the digital focus of the month, there was also a ‘Digital Takeover’ of the screens around the campus and some posts to the College social media sites. Students studied some designers to create digital artworks for the screens and posts. The collective creative response to DC IAM was in the creation of an ‘Awareism’: a digital art design, using a PowerPoint slide and design tools, that includes an encouraging statement, quotation, affirmation, informa- tion, or just something that the creator wants to raise the College community’s awareness of. As a society we are surrounded by messages all around us – statements on walls, screens, advertising boards, sides of buses, printed. We invited everyone to create some of their own messages during DC IAM. Tutor groups had the opportu- nity to start creating ‘Awareisms’ and they were shared on the campus digital screens with some also being posted on the College’s social media sites. There was lots to get involved with and we continue the theme of becoming more aware, with our on-going work around D&I and Wellbeing at the College. ◎
In creating posters for DC IAM Aware, Oscar Pelly (Year 13) hoped to increase the community’s understanding of the discrimination faced by many people in society
A fter Chris Ryder (Year 12) brought up the need to discuss ableism, among other lesser-mentioned areas of discrimination during this year’s DC IAM, we decided that ‘protected characteristics’ would form one of the three key strands of the month’s events, and I was tasked with creating a set of posters explaining each of the nine characteristics. As I set about writing the content for each of the posters, I decided on my three key objectives. I wanted to give people an understanding of how discrimination against the characteristics ap- pears within the real world; how these characteristics are protected legally within the real world and are becom- ing increasingly understood and appreciated; and that these forms of discrimination are very current and highly prevalent issues. To this end, I came up with several real-life scenarios that exemplified different, perhaps less-thought-of forms of discrimination against protected groups, backed up by statistics that I had carefully chosen to be powerful, surprising and to promote discussion – all taken from the Office for National Statistics. Having created the content for all nine of the protected characteristics, Chris and I were privileged to go and discuss the design of the posters with the DC Communi- cations and Marketing team. We came up with a tiered set of designs that maximised impact and awareness for stu- dents while encouraging further education. There would be a set of posters displaying one key statistic each, and another set of posters providing more statistics, more detail, and real-life examples for each of the protected characteristics. This was all held together by colour coor- dination and iconography, allowing students to find more detail on aspects they were interested in, and appreciate the breadth of the protected characteristics.
Walking into school and seeing the posters everywhere around me was a moment of immense pride. I could tell from con- versations in my year group that the graph- ic designers had
created something that was extremely effective at creating discussion. I know many people were unaware of some of the figures they read, or that certain characteristics were indeed victims of discrimina- tion and were protected by law. I hope that the posters gave people an understanding of the significant issues some groups face, but also some optimism that legisla- tion is in place to progress our society. Most significantly, I think the posters improved people’s awareness of the diversity around them, and a realisation of the diversity present in their friends, families and their own identities. Given how effective the ‘protected characteristics’ theme is at covering a wide range of topical issues, I hope that this can be explored again in future years for new students at the College, perhaps in a different form. Most impor- tantly I hope that everyone who took the time to read the posters, did some further research, or discussed the issues with their classmates and friends, now feels that they have a better understanding, empathy and appreci- ation for the diversity within our Dulwich community and our society at large. ◎
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