INTRODUCTION

EXAMPLES

Bananas!*
Beautiful clothes, ugly reality
Big boys gone bananas!*
Blood, sweat & takeaways
Dream crazy
Employee visualisation appendage
Ghosts
Girl model
Handprint
Ilha das Flores
Jamelia – whose hair is it anyway?
Life of a bullet
Maquilapolis
Mangetout
Primark – on the rack
Tackle the shackles
The ginger trail
The messenger band
The true cost
UDITA

INTENTIONS

What do trade justice activists want their work to do?

Change consumer behaviour
Change corporate behaviour
Change government behaviour
Cross cultures
Educate workers
End violence & exploitation
Improve pay & conditions
Pop the bubble
Reach new audiences
Show capitalist evils
Show what’s possible
Teach economic geography
Tell the truth

TACTICS

What actions and strategies do they use to bring their intentions to life?

Add mood music
Blame, shame & guilt
Bring managers into view
Choose an audience
Create a character
Embody exploitation
Encourage a boycott
Encourage curiosity
Encourage detective work
Encourage empathy
Encourage feminist solidarities
Find & give inspiration
Find a character
Find the unions
Flip the script
Follow the people
Follow the thing
Give workers the mic!
Have a theory of change
Hold ’em accountable
Humanise workers
Include emotion
Include suffering kids
Include the digital
Involve consumers
Join with others
Join the dots
Juxtapose extremes
Lie to tell the truth
Make a website
Make it familiar
Make it funny
Make it incomplete
Make Music
Make the familiar strange
Place things carefully
Put your bodies in the way
Show both sides
Show the violence
Silence your critics
Spend some time
Stage a Q&A
Start somewhere different
Suggest concrete action
Target the right brand
Tell a story
Workers take the mic

RESPONSES

How do audiences respond to this work, the stories it tells, the suggestions it makes?

Attack your critics
Capitalism is sh*t
Creeperific
Guilty as charged
I get what it’s like
I gotta do something
I just cried
I know how they feel
I laughed my ass off
I want to find out more
I won’t buy it
I’m humming that music
I’m so angry
It’s so badly made
Liar! Fraud!
LOL capitalism
My hero!
Oh shut up
Silence your critics
That’s racist
There is no alternative
These consumers are insane
These people are inspiring
They aren’t experts!
This gives me hope
This is disgusting
This is so sad
Who to believe?
Who’s responsible?
Wow 💥 WTF?

IMPACTS

What changes does trade justice activism encourage in the world?

Activism is inspired
Activism is publicised
Activists are recruited
Audiences are empowered
Can’t tell
Corporations are punished
Corporations change
Debts are paid off
Governments intervene
I shop differently now
Now I know
Now we’re talking
Workers suffer
Workers’ pay & conditions improve

ADVICE TO FILMMAKERS

How students have used this handbook to criticaly anaylse trade justice activism

‘Get people to reflect, not recoil’
‘Choose the emotion that won’t let go – then hit ‘record’
‘You can’t Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V resistance’
‘Yes, it’s small. But that’s the point’
‘Just showing up – again and again – can be the start of something’
‘It’s funny how you can be so angry at someone who is just doing their job’

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FEATURED EXAMPLES

Primark – on the rack
Mangetout
Ilha das Flores
Blood, sweat & takeaways
Girl model
Ghosts
UDITA

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INGREDIENTS

INTENTIONS

Reach new audiences
Pop the bubble
Change consumer behaviour
Change corporate behaviour
Improve pay and conditions
Show what’s possible

TACTICS

Hold ’em accountable
Blame, shame & guilt
Lie to tell the truth
Start somewhere different
Involve consumers
Humanise workers
Find the unions
Find a character
Give workers the mic!
Encourage empathy
Juxtapose extremes
Suggest concrete action
Encourage feminist solidarities

RESPONSES

Attack your critics
Liar! Fraud!
Wow 💥 WTF?
I’m so angry
This is disgusting
Guilty as charged
I just cried
I gotta do something
Who’s responsible?
These people are inspiring

IMPACTS

Now we’re talking
Corporations change
I shop differently now
Workers suffer
Activism is inspired
Debts are paid off
Workers’ pay & conditions improve

“Get people to reflect, not recoil“

By Abbie Gollings

IN BRIEF

Student Abbie Gollings has taken the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter. She’s been watching trade justice documentaries, analysing the comments on their followthethings.com pages, and making sense of them using a draft copy of ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. She knows a thing or two about how trade justice documentaries work and what they can do. She’s been asked to imagine meeting a filmmaker who’s planning a new trade justice documentary. What advice could she give? Consider the emotions your work could evoke in its audiences. Which ones will encourage them to act in ways that could improve workers’ pay and conditions? And maybe start with the workers first? What’s her theory of change? What activism are they involved in. How could a filmmaker help?

More about this page.

We are slowly piecing together a followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism and are publishing draft pages here as we write them. This is an ‘advice’ page. The main text is an example of student work from the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module which followthethings.com CEO Ian ran at the University of Exeter in the 2024-25 academic year. Students watched 8 films, and read their pages on followthethings.com (with the expeption of an unfinished film called The ginger trail). They were asked to pair the comments brought together on each of the films’ followthethings.com pages with the appropriate ingredients phrases (naming their intentions, tactics, responses and impacts – show in bold below) being drafted for the Handbook. Using these phrases as a pattern language (see FAQs), students were tasked to work out how specific intentions (e.g. improve workers’ pay & conditions) needed specific tactics (e.g. flip the script) to generate different kinds of responses (e.g. this is disgusting), which could generate different kinds of impacts (e.g. audiences are empowered). [NB pages about each of these ingredients are coming soon] At the end of the module, students were asked to imagine that they had met someone who was about to make their first trade justice documentary. Drawing on what they had learned in the module, what advice could they give them on how to make it effective?

Question

How can I make an effective trade justice documentary?

Answer

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‘Effective’ means many things: matching impacts to intentions, getting people talking. But you can do more. Effective documentaries can lead to action; the ultimate goal: improve workers’ pay and conditions. I assume this is your aim. But not just as a temporary ‘lifeboat’ (Kister and Wenner, 2024) – you want long-lasting change. I’ve watched some trade justice films. Some missed this mark. But they all point towards it. You can learn from them.

Start ambitious. Change corporate behaviour. Expose how they exploit workers, shame them into action. Corporations can change structurally – improve pay and conditions! This is what Primark on the Rack attempted. Posing as buyers, narrator McDougall’s team went to hold Primark accountable for ‘its illegal labour activities’ (Maroney; 190-1; in Adley et al., 2025), capturing footage of young boy Mantheesh working illegally on Primark garments in India. This scene caused outrage. Primark became the ‘poster boy’ for child labour (Cook et al., 2018; 483, in Adley et al., 2025) 😬

Primark caught? Nope! They fired back. Attacked their critics. ‘Liar! Fraud! The footage is fake!’ I didn’t know who to believe. Commenters argued over who’s right. This pivotal scene of Mantheesh became about everything but his struggles. Backfire! Panicking, Primark abruptly closed the three factories blamed of outsourcing and child labour. Rid themselves of the problem, leaving ‘hundreds of garment workers in an even worse position than before’ (Arnott; 36; in Adley et al., 2025). Workers suffer.

Thanks to the film, ”good days’ for Mantheesh have come to an abrupt end’ (Hunt; 22, in Adley et al., 2025). 😳 . This is the opposite of its intention. I’ve used this example to show you how impactful film can be – and how risky. DON’T lie to tell the truth. Workers might suffer.

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SO.. let’s start smaller – a different angle. Target consumers. Try to change consumer behaviour. If you want people to rethink where their stuff comes from, pop the bubble. All activists need to shine light on the hidden realities (Duncombe, 2012). Cook and Woodyer (2012) explain how the ‘fetish’ of commodities hides the hands making them. So, as Boyd says (2012; in Duncombe, 2016, 122), you must make ‘the invisible visible.’ Showing the workers juxtaposing extremes can do this – it gets people questioning without blame, shame or guilt – which clearly didn’t work for Primark on the Rack.

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Mangetout and Ilha das Flores did this. But you can’t just throw any scenes together.Bloomfield and Sangalang (2014) helped me get this – you’ve gotta show the relationship between the scenes, like cause and effect, or moral contrast – so people connect the dots themselves. Leave space for imagination (Cook et al., 2007; 118). Like how Mangetout juxtaposes middle class diners who ate mangetout ‘between outbursts of smug crassness, [as] the African pickers were being treated as slaves’ (Holt, p.5; in Cook et al., 2025). Meanwhile Mark Dady, Tesco manager, smiles over his workers. It showed how Tesco policy exploits workers who completely rely on them, ignorant of their struggles, giving more attention to the vegetable than those producing it. Tesco weren’t explicitly blamed – viewers drew ‘their own depressing conclusions’ (Truss, np, in Cook et al., 2025) about how the workers were treated. I was so angry!

Ilha das Flores also juxtaposed extremes showing the tomato-connected lives of workers, animals, and consumers. For some, it hit hard – ‘impossible not to shed tears while watching’ (Anon; 17; in Pavalow, 2025). Wow 💥 WTF? I was shocked seeing dead bodies, children eating scraps a family had previously deemed inedible. But the shock didn’t lead me anywhere. If you look at Chouliaraki (2010), she explains this problem. She says when films show suffering too graphically or abstractly, they risk fetishising all over again. It becomes a spectacle of disgust (Lissner, 1981; 32, in Chouliaraki, 2010). I felt bombarded.

So, same technique, totally different outcomes. Emotions can work against you ⚠️ . Ilha das Flores left people feeling disgusted – by the end ‘I just felt like being sick’ (Redroom Studios, np; cited in Pavalow, 2025). Disgust can make your audience recoil (Ryynänen, Kosonen, and Ylönen, 2023). Someone said ‘the holocaust images made me stop watching’ (@andrewsharpe2587, np, in Pavalow, 2025). Not exactly the spark you need to fuel activism.

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But anger you can work with! Anger at Mangetout’s revelations inspired activism. Read Micheletti and Stolle (2008, p.749) to understand this emotional mobilisation. They explain how strong emotions like anger can drive change consumer behaviour and change corporate behaviour. That’s an effective outcome! Unlike disgust, anger is intentional (Ryynänen, Kosonen, and Ylönen, 2023). Mangetout was effective because, as Brown and Pickerill (2009) explain, there was somewhere to aim it: Tesco. Tesco felt pressured to join the Ethical Trading Initiative. Corporations have changed! SUCCESS!! 🎯 You see there are different ways to apply pressure. Different emotions get different responses. Get people to reflect, not recoil.

Targeting consumer audiences seems to be effective – you can target them other ways! Try to change consumer behaviour. Kahn (2016) explains that consumers are more responsible than ever – the solution to fast fashion problems! Make them feel they gotta do something.

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Involving consumers can be a powerful way to show them how to change. Blood Sweat and Takeaways tried this by taking 6 British food lovers to ‘walk-a-mile’ in workers’ shoes in Thailand and Indonesia (Cuthbertson; 46; in Clarke et al., 2025). Millions watched – it reached new audiences and opened viewers’ eyes: ‘I never gave much thought to where my food comes from’ (Lynn, np, in Clarke et al, 2025). But the show failed to tell viewers how to help – ‘boycott tuna or buy more of it?’ (Sutcliffe 2009 np, in Clarke et al., 2025).

🤔 What was the point? Instead, it focused on participants’ personal journeys, like Manos’ emotional revelation and apology to the workers shown below. It didn’t push for social change (Gupta and Fawcett, np, in Clarke et al., 2025), and letting consumers ‘play at’ being workers only extended the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Yang, 2017; 61).

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You must TELL consumers what to do (Haug and Busch, 2016). Explicitly link consumer habits with workers’ lives. In Primark on the Rack, a young woman is shown video evidence of children working on a top from Primark that she owned. She was shocked! Guilty as charged! Trust in Primark – gone. ‘It’s the end of the affair’ says McDougall (Panorama, 2008; 48:43). Consumer behaviour changed 👍 . people said they’d shop differently now 👍 . Did they?

I felt guilty too. All those times I’ve ventured to Primark for another cheap top. But what about the factory owners I’d seen? The children’s parents? Who’s responsible? I started justifying my actions, I’m a student. I can’t afford to shop elsewhere. ‘How dare that reporter incline towards that woman [shopping] in anyway that it’s her fault for buying clothes from Primark’ (Maddox 2008 np; in Adley, 2025). Young (2003) explains this response. Guilt is backwards-looking, people get defensive (Bartky 2002; in Yang 2017) and angry. Instead of collective action, blaming a consumer caused resentment and refusal to take responsibility (Young, 2003). I came to a dead end. But then I returned to Young (2003). She says you want to show people that it’s everyone’s responsibility.Y ou need to show them how to make a difference, but don’t blame. Guilt isn’t always effective.

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So avoid responses that will backfire. Your doc could be more effective by humanising workers. Get people talking about them. You’ve learnt about emotional responses – which ones should you evoke? Here you could turn to Kemp (2025) who explains that empathy can motivate helping behaviour and catalyse action (Nash and Corner, 2016). You want action! So encourage empathy.

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The unintentional popularity of Girl Model shows that finding a character can really effectively connect an audience to workers struggles through empathy. ‘It became ‘essential viewing for adolescent girls’ (Burr, 2012, np; in Hambly et al., 2025) because people had been emotionally impacted. Aspiring model Nadya (13) is carted off to Tokyo with hope for a better life, and money for her family. But these promises dissolve and the glamour and gloss of the industry was stripped away (Kermode, 2012, np, in Hambly et al., 2025). The images show her real emotions under the fake glamour. I just cried ‘I wanted to give Nadya a hug, because I felt her pain’ (DisturbedPixie, np; in Hambly et al, 2025).

The rawness of disappointment touched a nerve. Canning and Reinsborough (2012) explain that your audience cares more when they relate. So you could include relatable characters to engage your audience. Point your camera towards the workers and it becomes an ‘empathy machine’ (Jackson in Nals, 2018; 135). But there was nothing I could for Nadya. I was invested but at a dead end. But Ghosts shows how empathy CAN effectively inspire action.

Ghosts finds a character: Ai Qin. We follow her closely as she migrates to the UK for better wages and work. But she becomes trapped in a modern slave system. She repeatedly suffers. She cries and then… I cried.

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My emotions mirrored hers (Nals, 2018). Her plight comes up to you like an unforgiving tide (Keak np; in Allen et al., 2025). You want to help her. Some viewers said that showing her ordinary emotions brought her closer to ‘us’ bridging a ‘gulf’ between viewer and subject (Brass; 346; in Allen et al., 2025), but I felt like I was framed in an oppressor vs oppressed dynamic (Bardan, date; in Pereen, 2014; 44). She was a victim, the audience are saviours (Pereen, 2014; 44). Ghosts ends with the Morecambe Bay tragedy: Ai Qin survives, but viewers learn the victims’ families struggle with debt. Broomfield established the Morecombe Bay Victim’s fund (O’Keeffe 2006; in Allen et al., 2025) and emotionally-connected viewers, now cast as saviours, donate to clear these debts. Debts are paid off.

So if you encourage empathy and suggest concrete action you can drive effective change. But this help was temporary. And empathy donation relationships rely on the colonial gaze being maintained (Hall, 1992; in Chouliaraki, 2010) which is part of the problem. Your film can use empathy to get immediate change, but you need to switch it up to improve workers pay and conditions long-term.

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Individualising and blaming consumers and corporations can undermine your goal. An effective doc must promote trade justice without endangering workers. So start somewhere different. Let workers take the mic. Like UDITA (Arise) did. Following 5 female union workers, it shows what’s possible: powerful, collective action – ‘women’s hope and commitment to create better conditions for the next generation’ (Spooner; 32, in Barker et al, 2025). These people are inspiring. Empowered workers showed how resistance is already improving pay and conditions (Siddiqi, 2019). They had a voice – and knowing best how the garment industry should change (Khan, 2016), they can tell us what they want – (O’Neill, np; in Barker et al, 2025).

I could no longer excuse ignoring how my t-shirts are made because ‘[T]he actual garment workers themselves are saying that they want us to shop consciously. WE CAN DO IT’ (Gregory, np, in Barker et al., 2025). It shows that the workers don’t need ‘saving’ – Primark – On the Rack showed how victimising workers can harm their interests (Siddiqi, 2019), moving beyond the ‘us’ and ‘them’ divide. Before, I was encouraged to be a guilty consumer . Now I was encouraged to be a feminist in solidarity – an important move for audiences to make because it shows the collective responsibility we all have – that workers need to resist too (Young, 2003; 42).

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After so much despair, witnessing their resilience gave me hope. Your film can help apply pressure in the right places. Find the unions and help them to improve pay and conditions. Inspire viewers to work collectively. Make it forward-looking (Robin Zheng, 2019). Show there is an alternative, and you will make real change.

So to improve pay and conditions: target consumers and corporations, but be cautious ⚠️ . Get people talking about the workers, and mobilise emotions like empathy and anger into concrete action. Collate these ideas – have a theory of change and apply pressure from different angles. Like UDITA, give workers opportunity to show what’s possible to give the audience hope, a sense of togetherness.

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SOURCES

Adley, K., Keeble, R., Russell, P. Stenholm, N, Strang, W, and Valo,. T (2025) Primark – on the rack. followthethings.com/primark-on-the-rack.shtml (last accessed: 28th April, 2025)

Allen, H, Heaume, E, Heeley, L. Hedger, R, Johnson, S, McGregor, O & Webber, L (2025) Ghosts. followthethings.com/ghosts.shtml (last accessed: 25th April 2025)

Barker, T, Collier, T, Baker, A, Coppen, L & Eve, H (2025) UDITA (ARISE). followthethings.com/udita.shtml (last accessed: 25th April, 2025)

Bloomfield, E.F. and Sangalang, A. (2014) Juxtaposition as Visual Argument: Health Rhetoric in Super Size Me and Fat Head. Argumentation and Advocacy, 50(3), pp. 141– 156

+25 sources

Brown, G. and Pickerill, J. (2009) Space for Emotion in the Spaces Of Activism. Emotion, space and society, 2(1), pp. 24–35

Canning, D. and Reinsborough, P. (2012) Lead With Sympathetic Characters. in Beautiful Trouble. OR Books, p. 146

Chouliaraki, L. (2010) Post-humanitarianism: Humanitarian Communication Beyond a Politics of Pity. International journal of cultural studies, 13(2), p. 107–126.

Clarke, M Thomson, B. Bartley, V. Ibbetson-Price, K. Christie-Miller. E. & Schofield, H. (2025) Blood, Sweat & Takeaways. followthethings.com/blood-sweat-takeaways.shtml (last accessed: 28th April, 2025)

Cook, I. and Woodyer, T. (2012) Lives of Things. in The Wiley‐Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, p. 226–241

Cook, I. et al. (2007) ‘It’s More Than Just What It Is’: Defetishising Commodities, Expanding Fields, Mobilising Change. Geoforum, 38(6), p. 1113–1126

Cook, I, et al., (2025) Mangetout. followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml (last accessed: 28th April, 2025)

Duncombe, S. (2012) It Stands On Its Head: Commodity Fetishism, Consumer Activism, And The Strategic Use Of Fantasy. Culture and organization, 18(5), p.359–375.

Duncombe, S. (2016) ‘Does It Work? The Æffect of Activist Art. Social research 83(1), p.115-134.

Duncombe, S. (2023) A Theory of Change for Artistic Activism. The Journal of aesthetics and art criticism, 81(2), pp. 260–268

Hambly, A, King, E, Keogh, A, Renny-Smith, C, Callow,E, Thorogood, J & Alloy, V (2025) Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour. followthethings.com/girl-model.shtml (last accessed: 28th April, 2025)

Haug, A. and Busch, J. (2016) Towards an Ethical Fashion Framework. Fashion theory 20(3), p.317–339

Pavalow., M (2025) Ilha das Flores. followthethings.com/ilhadasflores.html (last accessed: 28th April, 2025)

Kemp, D. (2025) Comparing Disgust and Sadness: Examining the Interaction of Emotion and Information in Charity Appeals. Journal of social marketing, 15(1), p.42–58.

Khan, R. (2016) Doing Good and Looking good: Women in ‘Fast Fashion’ Activism. Women & Environments International Magazine, 96/97, p.7-9

Kister, J. and Wenner, M. (2024) Living Wages as Life Boat to Rescue Fairtrade’s Values for Hired Labour? The Case of Indian Tea Plantations. Die Erde: journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin 154(3), p.80-94

Micheletti, M. and Stolle, D. (2008) Fashioning Social Justice Through Political Consumerism, Capitalism, And The Internet. Cultural studies 22(5), p.749–769

Nåls, J. (2018) The Difficulty of Eliciting Empathy in Documentary. in Brylla, C & Kramer, M. (eds) Cognitive Theory and Documentary. Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan, p.135-148

Nash, K. and Corner, J. (2016) Strategic Impact Documentary: Contexts Of Production And Social Intervention. European journal of communication 31(3), p.227–242

Peeren, E. (2014) The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility. London: Palgrave Macmillan

Ryynänen, M., Kosonen, H.S. and Ylönen, S.C. (2023) From visceral to the aesthetic: tracing disgust in contemporary culture. in their (eds.) Cultural Approaches to Disgust and the Visceral. London: Routledge, p.3-16

Siddiqi, D.M. (2009) Do Bangladeshi Factory Workers Need Saving? Sisterhood In The Post-Sweatshop Era. Feminist review, 91(91), p.154–174

Yang, J. (2017) Screening privilege: global injustice & responsibility in 21st-Century Scandinavian film & media. PhD thesis: University of Oslo (https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/70905/Yang%2bPhD%2bScreening%2bPrivilege.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y last accessed 28th April 2025)

Young, I. (2003) From guilt to solidarity: sweatshops & political responsibility. Dissent 50(2), p.39-44

Zheng, R. (2019) What Kind of Responsibility Do We Have for Fighting Injustice? A Moral- Theoretic Perspective on the Social Connections Model. Critical horizons : journal of social & critical theory, 20(2), p.109–126

Image credits

Icon: conversation (https://thenounproject.com/icon/conversation-6769395/) by kliwir art from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)

Primark on the rack: credit BBC.

Mangetout: credit BBC

Ilha das Flores: credit Casa de Cinema de Porto Alegre

Blood, sweat & takeaways: credit BBC

Girl model: credit Carnivalesque Films

Ghosts: credit Beyond Films

UDITA – credit Rainbow Collective

Handbook screengrabs: credit followthethings.com

SECTION: advice

Written by Abbie Gollings, edited by Ian Cook (first published July 2025)

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FEATURED EXAMPLES

Girl model
Mangetout
The ginger trail
Ghosts
Primark – on the rack

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INGREDIENTS

INTENTIONS

Pop the bubble
Cross cultures
Tell the truth
Show capitalist evils
End violence & exploitation
Change corporate behaviour
Teach economic geography

TACTICS

Have a theory of change
Target the right brand
Follow the thing
Tell the truth
Tell a story
Include emotion
Encourage empathy
Find & give inspiration
Workers take the mic!
Find a character
Create a character
Bring managers into view
Show the violence
Include suffering kids
Juxtapose extremes
Blame, shame & guilt
Encourage feminist solidarities
Add mood music
Silence your critics

RESPONSES

This is so sad
This is disgusting
I’m so angry
I just cried
These consumers are insane
Capitalism is sh*t
These people are inspiring
This gives me hope
I want to find out more

IMPACTS

Now I know!
Now we’re talking
Activism is publicised
Activism is inspired
Debts are paid off
Governments intervene
Corporations change

“Choose the emotion that won’t let go – then hit ‘record’“

By Luke Elkington

IN BRIEF

Student Luke Elkington has taken the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter. He’s been watching trade justice documentaries, analysing the comments on their followthethings.com pages, and making sense of them using a draft copy of ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. He knows a thing or two about how trade justice documentaries work and what they can do. He’s been asked to imagine meeting a filmmaker who’s planning a new trade justice documentary. What advice could he give? Get inspired by the films he’s watched, and get the emotions right. Then record.

More about this page.

We are slowly piecing together a followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism and are publishing draft pages here as we write them. This is an ‘advice’ page. The main text is an example of student work from the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module which followthethings.com CEO Ian ran at the University of Exeter in the 2024-25 academic year. Students watched 8 films, and read their pages on followthethings.com (with the expeption of an unfinished film called The ginger trail). They were asked to pair the comments brought together on each of the films’ followthethings.com pages with the appropriate ingredients phrases (naming their intentions, tactics, responses and impacts – show in bold below) being drafted for the Handbook. Using these phrases as a pattern language (see FAQs), students were tasked to work out how specific intentions (e.g. improve workers’ pay & conditions) needed specific tactics (e.g. flip the script) to generate different kinds of responses (e.g. this is disgusting), which could generate different kinds of impacts (e.g. audiences are empowered). [NB pages about each of these ingredients are coming soon] At the end of the module, students were asked to imagine that they had met someone who was about to make their first trade justice documentary. Drawing on what they had learned in the module, what advice could they give them on how to make it effective?

Question

How can I make an effective trade justice documentary?

Answer

First things first, cos you’re making a trade justice documentary, your film must contribute to the Trade Justice Movement – or TJM. But what does that even mean?!?!? The TJM challenges unfair imbalances in power between trading nations by tearing up the rule book ✊🏽 and the goal is to create a global system which prioritizes the people 👩🏻‍🤝‍👩🏾 and the planet 🌍 (Bannister & Bergan, 2023). So, to be a trade justice documentary, your activism must try to shift power away from the capitalist class 👿 and toward supply chain workers 🤗 (Wright, 2015). Easy right ?

OK … let me tell you a story. It’s 2008. I’m watching ⚽️ football. Age 6. Suddenly, it’s half-time. A charity’s plea for donations appears on the TV. Starving Sudanese children 👶🏿 scatter the screen. Their exposed black ribs protrude from the telly stabbing 🗡 into my young eyes – bringing them to tears 😢. WHY do I still remember? Emotions imprint far deeper than facts ever can – so your film must aim not just to inform, but to include emotion that will shake your viewer.

In April, I walked past Primark. My attention focused on glossy posters of young girls 👧 posing. Slowly, their faces distorted into Nadya Vall from Girl Model. Filmmakers follow this 13 year old girl from Siberia to Tokyo, chasing her dream to become a model. But it falls apart and she cries for help. The image burnt 🔥 into my brain 🧠. I couldn’t stop thinking about Nadya.

Filmmakers use tactics to trigger 🤮 😭 😢 😫 😡 😳 😊. Girl Model finds a character in Nadya who ‘gives the film a clear protagonist'(Saito in Hambly et al., 2025, np) creating a bond between the viewer and Nadya (Nash & Corner, 2016). The film includes suffering kids 👧 as Nadya cries to return to her impoverished home which is contrasted with Ashley, Nadya’s manager, who is free to wander her ‘cavernous Connecticut mansion’ 🏡 (Lucca in Hambly et al., 2025, np).

By bringing a manager into view, filmmakers reveal Ashley’s apathy through unsettling imagery – strange dolls 🪆and eerie photo cut-outs of models – which underscore her ‘disconnection from the modelling world’ (Redmon in ibid) and Nadya (Natter & Jones III, 1993). These tactics together encourage empathy 🥹by helping viewers really understand Nadya’s suffering → which often makes viewers sad (Redmon in Hambly et al., 2025; Dant, 2012).

It worked! It’s ‘saddening’ ☹️ (Almachar in Hambly et al., 2025, np). I’m so sad. Sadness is ‘a response to and feeling of loss’ (Kemp, 2025, p.44). Myself and others found Girl Model pretty ‘disturbing’ (Cli in Hambly et al., 2025, np)….it’s disgusting 🤮 . These feelings are brought on by violations of morality and with these physical feelings of revulsion 🤢, the film’s message hits deeper into the viewer’s heart ❤️ (Ryynänen et al., 2023).

By not ramming information down our throats, Girl Model told the truth – ‘a verité narrative’ (Sabin & Redmond in Hambly et al., 2025, np) and this amplified 🔊 the film’s impacts ☹️ 🤮 (Sabin & Redmond in Hambly et al., 2025).

Activism was inspired! Someone else made a film, people asked how they could create change, and conversations roared online – this engagement with the film is the first step toward real change … now we’re talking 💬 (Sabin & Redmond and Bleasdale in Hambly et al, 2025).

So now we know about Nadya’s exploitation…. our knowledge is the starting point for action ✊🏽.

Hold on ⛔️. Wenzel (2011) warns that consumers often confuse gaining knowledge with meaningful action. As a result, films can end up re-fetishizing commodities, simply generating new demand: dammit 😤 (ibid).

BUT WAIT! Nash and Corner (2016) explain how to overcome this…..emotions can be just as powerful, if not more so, than knowledge. By fostering emotional attachment to an issue, films have the potential to stimulate genuine action, not just passive awareness (ibid)!!!!

OK, now I know emotions are important. Girl Model got people ☹️ and 🤮. Mangetout got people 😡.

Mangetout popped the bubble by confronting Brits ‘with their most popular supermarket Tesco actually running a farm in Zimbabwe’ (Miller in Cook et al., 2025, np). Crossing cultures and following the thing traces the journey of mangetout peas 🫛 ‘from African soil to English dinner plate’ (Phillips in ibid) exposing the interconnected web of commodities and their externalities along the way (Callon, 1998). BAM 💥 my commodity fetishism 🫧 was popped ← Marx can #RIP 🪦 (Cook et al., 2002).

Tesco veg buyer Mark Dady travels to Zimbabwe bringing managers into view. He inspects Chiparawe farm [code 🧑‍💻 for] he bullies farmers to grow the perfect 🫛 for minimal Ps 💷 (Aaronovitch in Cook et al., 2025). Mark’s arrival 🛬 is accompanied by imperial music to add mood music 🎵 which juxtaposes extremes with Zimbabweans singing ‘Tesco’s our dear friend’ 🎤(Holt in Cook et al., np; Friedberg, 2004). Juxtaposition is useful to filmmakers cos it helps highlight stark inequalities (Wenzel, 2011)!

A juxtaposition 👨‍🏫 masterclass………

Mark ⬆️ demands farmworkers trim the 🫛 leaves for the consumer’s benefit …! Grannie ⬇️ explains her past traumas while a British consumer at a dinner party ⬇️ says workers – like Grannie – ‘are probably happy in their mud hut’ (O’Malley in Cook et al., 2025, np).

These tactics juxtaposes British consumers 🤵‍♂️ with Zimbabwean farmworkers 👩🏾‍🌾 leading to a response of these consumers are insane – they’re called arrogant, bstards, and c&*ts (in Cook et al., 2025). Contrasting consumers with producers provokes viewers to rally 🪧 against the dinner party guests (Wenzel, 2011). Viewers were so angry 😡 at Tesco 👿 that they wanted to ‘kick in the TV’ 📺 (Jema in Cook et al., 2025, np). Anger helps prompt action by breaking viewer passivity (Chouliaraki, 2010). In response to Mangetout, Tesco joined the Ethical Trade Initiative showing ‘the ability of film to intervene in the foodscape’ (Richardson-Ngwenya & Richardson in Cook et al., 2025, np). Corporations changed 💥💥💥 because of political consumerism (Stolle & Micheletti 2013).

Effective. Intentions → Impacts. But just a word of warning, triggering tooooo strong emotions can backfire. Chouliaraki (2010) – worth a read 📚 btw warns of the boomerang (viewers resent blame, shame & guilt tactics ) and bystander effects (viewers feels powerless 😬). The trick is to deliver enough emotion to spark action 🧨 without triggering paralysis or resentment 🫩.

But The ginger 🫚 trail doesn’t trigger strong emotions at all. 👎 A major flaw?

It’s an I-Doc 🎦. Viewers choose clips 📽 and in what order they’re watched. Interactivity facilitates participation in making a film rather than simply consuming it → this immerses viewers (Aston, 2022). This film teaches economic geographies (Ananthanarayana, 2025). It shows slow violence caused by ginger cultivation but it’s hard to show violence that takes place over many years ⏳ (ibid; Davies, 2022). It overcomes this by showing communities suffering consequences of slow violence which impacts viewers emotionally 💓 which is what Davies (2022) recommends!

Viewers wanted to find out more. To ‘work out the puzzle 🧩 of seemingly disconnected clips’ (Anon in Ananthanarayana, 2025, np). But responses were ‘not emotionally charged’ 🤦‍♂️ (ibid). Still, now we’re talking; viewers ‘told their house about the film’ (ibid). 🆒 Knowledge is dispersed. But was this an effective film?

IMO…No. It nailed interactivity. But the lack of emotional response means the film risks creating passive awareness 🤷‍♀️ rather than action (Nash and Corner, 2016). Films have to get the viewer emotionally.

That’s where Ghosts 👻 comes in. A fictional film. Based on the ‘true story’ (Broomfield in Allen et al., 2025, np) of 23 Chinese migrant workers who died 💀 at Morecambe Bay in 2004. It tells the truth 💯 and shows capitalist evils by telling the story of Ai Qin and ‘the chain of labour that exploits illegal immigrants’ (Romney in ibid). Telling stories are effective as they help viewers connect to characters which moves them emotionally 💓 (Nash and Corner, 2016). The film created characters AND found characters! Lead actors were Chinese migrants → ‘neither actors nor themselves’ (Martin in Allen et al., 2025, np).

Oh and also, Ghosts showed the violence 😡→🤕 workers endured in Morecambe bay forcing the viewer to imagine themselves there (Wenzel, 2011). These tactics combine to include (so much raw) emotion in Ghosts meaning viewers know ‘this is the real thing’ (Anon in Allen et al., 2025, np).

Then I cried 😭. Having built an attachment to the workers, having seen the violence they were victims of, the scene where they drown 🏊‍♀️ was TOO MUCH! It’s difficult ‘ NOT to cry’ (Johnjoe66 in ibid). Viewers feel helpless which combined with feeling so sad 😞 they just cry 😭 (Frome, 2014). Ghosts shows how ‘unchecked capitalism haunt[s] this deeply felt film’ (Geall in Allen et al. 2025, np). Ugggh, capitalism is sh*t! ← 😢 😡 😩 🤮.

But … something positive … debts were paid off ← ‘the crippling debts inherited by the families of the victims of the Morecambe Bay Tragedy have been paid off’ (Anon in ibid).

Emotion + Knowledge = Action❗️2008 → 2025 and a film still makes me 😭. Ghosts 👻 worked.

Now, Primark on the rack 👕👗 worked but wait for the 👀 twist. It showed capitalist evils by exposing Primark’s suppliers using child refugees from Sri Lanka as wage labourers in India, earning just ’19p a day’ 😞 (Williams in Adley et al., 2025, np). Capitalism f*cking failed these people 🫩 (Chellan, 2023). By targeting the right brand – one with ‘170 stores nationwide’ (Williams in Adley et a., 2025, np), filmmakers tried to change corporate behaviour by ‘set[ting] up [their] target’ 🎯 (Maroney in ibid). Exposing the discrepancies between Primark’s brand image and reality hit 👊 them hard ← exploiting their corporate vulnerabilities ❌ ruining reputations, provoking them to change (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008; Cook et al., 2019).

Want a strong reaction? Like Girl Model, include suffering kids 🔀 Capitalism is sh*t ← ‘An inequality-enhancing machine’ 🏭 (Wright, 2015, np).

BUT THERE’S A PROBLEM!!! The filmmakers [allegedly] ⚠️ fabricated ⚠️ a scene of children working in Bangalore – the ‘footage was not authentic’ (Greenslade in Adley et al., 2025, np). Child exploitation is socially unacceptable, and I think the filmmakers 🎥 took advantage of this to incite 😡 😢 😩 🤮 (Aguigar et al., 2008). Primark tried to silence 🤐 their critics by challenging the filmmakers but this backfired because of the Streisand Effect → activism was publicised 🤯 (Cook et al., 2018). Prioritising PR 🧯drew more attention 👀 to their exploitation… ‘what about the other children that featured in THE REST OF THE ONE HOUR FILM’ (emilynew in Adley et al, 2025, np).

With public outcry magnified 🔎, corporations changed. In 2013, the Rana Plaza clothes factory collapsed killing over 1,100 people in Dhaka, Bangladesh (Cook et al., 2018). Primark’s response was to spend £9 million 💰to support local communities – or to (try) cover their arses (ibid).

An EFFECTIVE film. But the filmmaker who exposed Primark also found out (ibid). The film would have triggered the desired anti-capitalist reaction without the fake footage ← something to avoid 🚫 when making your film!

Uh-oh, back to Rana Plaza. I’m welling up. But I’m crying 😭 because UDITA is inspiring.

Over 5 years, UDITA follows female garment factory workers in their mission for justice before and after Rana Plaza. Ending violence and exploitation was the goal – ‘Udita shows the agency of these women’ (Minney in Barker et al., 2025, np) to overcome injustice. It encourages feminist 🤜🏻🤛🏽 solidarities giving women greater confidence and knowledge to DEMAND their rights (Hale & Willis, 2007). Its ‘just the workers voices’🗣 (Rainbow Collective in Barker et al., 2025, np).

In UDITA – workers take the mic 🎙! Collective action is key to taking down capitalism (McLaren, 2019). By finding and giving 🌞 inspiration – ‘like the inspirational Ratna Miah’ (Hoskins in Barker et al., 2025, np), there is one overriding response: these people are ‘inspiring on a global level’ (ibid) 🌍. Inspiration is powerful ✊🏽 cos it encourages the viewer to emulate the inspiring women in UDITA (Thrash and Elliot, 2003). And the best bit? It worked alongside other emotions. This is so sad. I’m so angry. This gives me hope (Season Bangla Drama in Barker et al., 2025, np).

This hope encourages other people to continue with their own activism (Brown & Pickerell, 2009). UDITA inspired activism as people globally challenge injustice through their own community campaigns 🤗 -‘I am filming everything to collect evidence for our own community campaign’ (Salmon in Barker et al., 2025, np). And there’s more! Governments intervened. In France, legislation changed because ‘Rana Plaza was covered by newspapers, petition of NGOs, film, documentary’ (Evans in ibid) like UDITA. 🤩 WHOA! That’s real change ✊🏽.

RIGHT, so what’s my answer???

Effective films use emotions 😡 😢 😭 😩 🤮 🤗 🫩 🤯 🤩 to provoke responses that galvanise action. So think carefully before locking in your theory of change. Choose the emotion that won’t let go – then hit 🔘 ‘record.’ By shaking viewers emotionally and making them feel injustice, you’re not just making a documentary – you’re starting a movement ✊🏽.

Think of Nadya 😭, Grannie 😡, Ai Qin 🏊‍♀️, the children 👧 of Primark, and the women 🧕🏽🧕🏽🧕🏽 of Dhaka.

Effective films ignite emotion. Now you know. Get out there and inspire change! ✨

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SOURCES

Adley, K., Keeble, R., Russell, P., Stenholm, N., Strang, W. and Valo, T. (2025) Primark – On The Rack. followthethings.com (https://followthethings.com/?p=2655 last accessed 27 April 2025)

Aguigar, P., Vala, J., Correia, I. & Pereira, C. (2008) Justice in Our World and in that of Others: Belief in a Just World and Reactions to Victims. Social Justice Research 21(1), p. 50-68.

Allen, H., Heaume, E., Heeley, L., Hedger, R., Johnson, S., McGregor, O. and Webber, L. (2025). Ghosts. followthethings.com (https://followthethings.com/?p=10357 last accessed 27 April 2025)

Ananthanarayana, B. (2025) Untitled [Q&A video & transcript], GEO3123: Geographies of material culture. University of Exeter.

+28 sources

Aston, J. (2022) Interactive Documentary: Re-setting the Field. Interactive Film and Media Journal 2(4), p.7-18

Bannister, L. & Bergan, R. (2023) A timeline of UK trade and trade justice. London: Trade Justice Movement

Barker, T., Collier, J., Baker, A., Coppen, L. and Eve, H. (2025) UDITA (ARISE). followthethings.com (https://followthethings.com/?p=1593 last accessed 27 April 2025)

Brown, G. & Pickerell, J. (2009) Space for emotion in the spcaes of activism. Emotion, space, & society 2, p.24-35

Callon, M. (1998) An essay on framing & overflowing: economic externalities revisited by sociology. The sociological review 46(1), p.244–269

Chellan, N. (2023) The life of capitalism. in his F/Ailing capitalism and the challenge of COVID-19. Leiden: Brill, p.180-216

Chouliaraki, L. (2010) Post-humanitarianism Huamitarian communication beyond a politics of pity. International journal of cultural studies 13(2), p.107-126

Cook et al, I. (2018) Inviting construction: Primark, Rana Plaza and Political LEGO. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 43(3), p.477-495

Cook et al, I. (2019) A new vocabulary for cultural–economic geography? Dialogues in Human Geography 9(1), p.83-87

Cook et al, I. (2025) Mangetout. followthethings.com (https://followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml last accessed 27 April 2025)

Cook et al, I. (2002) Commodities: the DNA of capitalism. (https://followtheblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/commodities_dna.pdf last accessed 27 April 2025)

Dant, T. (2012) Mediating morality. in his Television and the moral imaginary. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 147-178

Davies, T.,(2022) Slow violence and toxic geographies: ‘Out of sight’ to whom? Politics and Space 40(2), p.409-427

Duncombe, S. (2023) A Theory of Change for Artistic Activism. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 81, p.260-268

Friedberg, S. (2004) The ethical complex of corporate food power. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22, p.513-531

Frome, J. (2014) Melodrama and the psychology of tears. Projections 8(1), p.23–40

Hale, A. & Willis, J. (2007) Women Working Worldwide: transnational networks, corporate social responsibility and action research. Global Networks 7(4), p.453-476

Hambley, A., King, E., Keogh, A., Renny-Smith, C., Callow, E., Thorogood, J. & Alloy, V. (2025) Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour. followthethings.com (https://followthethings.com/girl-model.shtml last accessed 27 April 2025)

Kemp, D. (2025) Comparing disgust and sadness: examining the interaction of emotion and information in charity appeals. Journal of Social Marketing [online early], pp. 42-58.

McLaren, M. (2019) Global Gender Justice: Human Rights and Political Responsibility. Critical Horizons 20(2), p.127-144.

Micheletti, M. & Stolle, D. (2008) Fashioning social justice through political consumerism, capitalism and the internet. Cultural Studies 22(5), p.749-769

Nash, K. & Corner, J. (2016) Strategic impact documentary: contexts of production & social intervention. European journal of communication 31(3), p.227–242

Natter, W. & Jones III. J.P. (1993) Pets or meat: class, ideology & space in Roger & Me. Antipode 25(2), p.140-158

Ryynänen, M., Kosonen, H. & Ylönen, S. (2023) From visceral to the aesthetic: tracing disgust in contemporary culture. in their (eds.) Cultural Approaches to Disgust and the Visceral. London: Routledge, p.3-16

Stolle, D. & Micheletti, M. (2013) Does political consumerism matter? Effectiveness and limits of political consumer activism repertoires. in their Political consumerism: global responsibility in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.204-243

Thrash, T. & Elliot, A. (2003) Inspiration as a Psychological Construct. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84(4), p.871-889

Wenzel, J. (2011) Consumption for the common good? Commodity biography film in an age of postconsumerism. Public culture 23(3), p.573-602

Eric Olin Wright (2015) How to be an anti-capitalist today. Jacobin 12 February (https://jacobin.com/2015/12/erik-olin-wright-real-utopias-anticapitalism-democracy/ last accessed 27 April 2025)

Image credits

Icon: conversation (https://thenounproject.com/icon/conversation-6769395/) by kliwir art from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)

Girl model screenshots: credit Carnivalesque Films

Mangetout: credit BBC

The ginger trail: credit Bharath Ananthanarayana

Ghosts: credit Beyond Films

Primark on the rack: credit BBC.

Handbook screengrabs: credit followthethings.com

SECTION: advice

Written by Luke Elkington, edited by Ian Cook (first published July 2025)

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FEATURED EXAMPLES

Blood, sweat & takeaways
Girl model
UDITA
Mangetout

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INGREDIENTS

INTENTIONS

Pop the bubble
Cross cultures
Show capitalist evils
Tell the truth
Teach economic geography
Show what’s possible

TACTICS

Have a theory of change
Choose an audience
Make it familiar
Bring managers into view
Involve consumers
Fund the unions
Humanise workers
Workers take the mic!
Lie to tell the truth
Silence your critics

RESPONSES

This is so sad
Capitalism is sh*t
I won’t buy it
Liar! Fraud!
It’s so badly mad
Who to believe?
I’m humming that music
These people are inspiring

IMPACTS

Now I know
Now we’re talking
I shop differently now
Corporations change
Governments intervene
Debts are paid off
Can’t tell

“You can’t Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V resistance“

By Lucian Harford

IN BRIEF

Student Lucian Harford has taken the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter. He’s been watching trade justice documentaries, analysing the comments on their followthethings.com pages, and making sense of them using a draft copy of ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. He knows a thing or two about how trade justice documentaries work and what they can do. He’s’s been asked to imagine meeting a filmmaker who’s planning a new trade justice documentary. What advice could he give? Well, it turns into a bit of a rant. He’s been riled up by these films and the ways that they’ve been discussed on their followthethings.com pages. He ends up giving some stark, unexpected advice. We can’t give you the spoiler here though.

More about this page.

We are slowly piecing together a followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism and are publishing draft pages here as we write them. This is an ‘advice’ page. The main text is an example of student work from the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module which followthethings.com CEO Ian ran at the University of Exeter in the 2024-25 academic year. Students watched 8 films, and read their pages on followthethings.com (with the expeption of an unfinished film called The ginger trail). They were asked to pair the comments brought together on each of the films’ followthethings.com pages with the appropriate ingredients phrases (naming their intentions, tactics, responses and impacts – show in bold below) being drafted for the Handbook. Using these phrases as a pattern language (see FAQs), students were tasked to work out how specific intentions (e.g. improve workers’ pay & conditions) needed specific tactics (e.g. flip the script) to generate different kinds of responses (e.g. this is disgusting), which could generate different kinds of impacts (e.g. audiences are empowered). [NB pages about each of these ingredients are coming soon] At the end of the module, students were asked to imagine that they had met someone who was about to make their first trade justice documentary. Drawing on what they had learned in the module, what advice could they give them on how to make it effective?

When it escapes the cinema room and ambushes you in Aisle 3, Sainsbury’s, Exeter, EX1 3PF. Let me contextualise. December 2024. Deep in my nectar price era 🤑, zigzagging Pinhoe Sainsbury’s. I’m on a mission. Marx would’ve hated me. Classic case of commodity fetishism (Cook et al., 2002).

29th of March 2025. Day after my last Geographies of Material Culture seminar. I’m back in Sainsbury’s. Innocent enough, right? Wrong. Aisle 3. Midway between the mangetout and the courgettes. Boom – my brain betrays me.

It whispers: “Tesco’s our dear friend.” 😉

I froze. Kenyan broccoli gave me side-eyes. Ghanaian pineapples look like they’re organising a strike. Jamaican bananas are silently mourning my moral compass. 💀 It was no longer a food shop but a postcolonial reckoning under migraine-inducing strip lighting……..cheers (Cook and Harrison, 2003). Thanks, material culture films. You broke me. But like… in a good way? I guess consumption with a conscience is better than nothing (Wenzel, 2011). Now I’m spiralling. If a film can do that to me (burrow into my nectar choices and trolley). Is that… ✨effective✨? 🤔 Do you even know what ✨effective✨ means? Here’s a clue. Have a theory of change.

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No, it’s not just some academic buzzword. It’s your ‘how’. HOW does ‘X’ lead to ‘Y’ (Duncombe, 2023). Think about it like a chain. Your activism’s intentions need the right tactics, as they likely to lead to specific responses and impacts. Example: If you want your film’s response – IDK – to be ‘capitalism is sh*t‘ and its impact to be ‘I shop differently now‘ 💁 (or go bigger: corporations change!), then it needs the correct intentions and tactics to hopefully lead to this.

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That’s a theory of change 101! Easy, right…….?? NOPE. Thats what REALLY pisses me off. 😤 ⚠️ Disclaimer: This might turn into a crazy rant ⚠️

Right. Say you want to make a film to take down capitalism (slay). If that’s where you’re starting, go back and watch Mark Phillips’ Mangetout (1997). It dropped right before the 1999 Battle of Seattle, a pivotal moment when people really started calling out the global trade injustice screwing over the Global South (Bannister and Bergan, 2023).

Mangetout popped the bubble as it was the ‘first time British viewers were confronted with their most popular supermarket, Tesco’ (Millar in Cook et al., 2025, np). And it crossed cultures of the 🫛pea. From farm 🇿🇼 to shelf 🇬🇧.

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It introduced Grannie Chabvundira, ‘a 25-year-old mangetout caterpillar inspector’ (Philips in ibid), who drops the line: “life is too hard” (Mangetout, 2005 time 41.12), becuase of F***ing Tesco’s!!! 😳

Unlike Grannie, Tesco manager Mark Dady was brought into view. On the farm, Mark and his team ‘were treated like Gods’ (O’Mally in Cook et al., 2025, np). ‘It was sickening’ (ibid). 🤢

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Afterwards, ‘Tesco became evil [or sh*t] for me’ (Chapman in ibid). I too questioned my damn shopping habits and thought ‘I won’t buy it!’ ⛔

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Seems a good impact? You might think, ‘to be ✨effective✨, I gotta do what Mangetout did’. Not so fast, young activist, it’s not that simple. 😝 Introducing Blessing. ‘Chief mange-tout picker at Chiparawe’ (Hall in ibid). He has never been to Tesco.

Hopefully, the penny has dropped for you as it did for me. Blessing’s life isn’t anyone’s to interpret. There’s no blueprint for ✨effective✨ activism, no one path to impact. People, contexts, and strategies vary, too (Duncombe, 2024).

It’s like me saying Mangetout existed to make JUST ME and YOU 🫵 feel something. #Embarrassed #Selfish 😖 So. You should choose an audience. Nisbet and Aufderheide (2009) say mobilisation begins with specificity. Your film doesn’t need everyone. Just the right people.

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Take this scene. Read the subtitles! Ai Quin & her co-worker are in a Tesco store. Before they harvested cockles in Morecambe Bay, they’d picked spring onions Tesco. Ghosts ripped the packaging open and said: ‘They’re not just onions. They’re testimonies of struggle’ (Cook & Woodyer, 2012).

Ghosts ‘showed the dark side of globalisation’ (Bradshaw in Allen et al., 2025, np). It didn’t just say the politics of consumption are broken. It ‘made for an uncomfortable viewing’ (Tinniswood in ibid), making Tinniswood feel globalisation’s fracture lines (Hartwick, 2000). 🤕 Great! Now I know about ‘the appalling circumstances’ (Tang in Allen et al., 2025, np) of the Morecambe Bay disaster, and that Ghosts encouraged audience to donate momey to pay off the debts of the drowned workers’ famililes in China. A couple of ‘Ys’ for this film. 🙌

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That’s good impact, but…… in my opinion … MORECAMBE BAY SHOULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!! 🤬

I’m getting riled up. Let’s talk irony and absurdity. Ilha das Flores, is a 1989 pseudo-doc that teaches economic geography as ‘deep as a punch in the stomach’ (@nacaotutumbaie3559 in Pavalow, 2025 np). It’s about ‘capitalism, told through the story of a tomato’ (Delaney, in ibid).

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The film, particularly this scene at the end (read subtitles 👇), made me feel like ‘an alien watching a documentary about inequality on Earth’ 👽 (@Canalinfantilreinabowwfriends in ibid).

People raved! ‘What an incredible documentary’ (@rosangelafigueiredo6082 in ibid), and it was crowned ‘the best Brazilian short film ever made’ (Anon in ibid)! 👑 It’s haunting, clever, and people ‘remember it very well’ (@AndersonPedron in ibid). Its impact? I can’t tell…🤷

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What now? Let’s try another example. Your intention could be to pop the bubble – because ‘when it comes to food, we are spoilt for choice, but would we feel the same if we knew the human cost?’ (Anon in Clarke et al., 2025 np) – and your tactics could be to make it familiar and involve some consumers. ‘X’ clearly leads to ‘Y’?

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This is what BBC 3’s Blood Sweat and Takeaways series did. It followed ‘six typical young British food consumers’ (Cuthbertson in ibid) who were dumped into the sweat and steam of Southeast Asia’s food production lines. One, ‘[Manos] was annoying from the first 5 mins’ (HairHolic in ibid) after kindly being hosted at a supply chain worker’s home.

Another, Olu, then body slams Manos into a glass wall in a tuna factory. 🫠

It was like watching Love Island sweatshop edition! These consumers were insane! Honestly, it was ‘so excruciating that you’re tempted to’ (Ferguson in ibid) turn off this badly made ‘scripted drama bs’ (keikurooka5105 in ibid) 🤬.

Nåls (2018) was right. By involving the wrong consumers/characters, you risk your audience sitting back partially detaching, watching suffering like it’s another episode…..or worse fully detaching.

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Need proof? Read below 😬 👇😂

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Discussion of Blood, sweat & takeaways in Clarke et al (2025, np).

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Okay, I need to breathe. You need to breathe. This rant is not over. ☠ Let’s talk about another example. And lies. Yes – LIES. Your doc could lie to tell the truth. Sorry, not sorry. 😈

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Stam (2016) said it. Documentaries are not ‘pure’, never were. Never will be. 🫢 Take Primark: On the Rack. The 2008 documentary followed a thing (a sequin top) by using ‘hidden cameras’ (McDougall in Adley et al., 2025 np) to uncover ‘the use of child labour in the finishing of cheap clothes’ (ibid). Stam would love this 🤣

This was connective aesthetics – grabbing your senses, stirring emotions, making you realise that every time you throw on a £3 Primark tee (Cook et al., 2000). But you’re also watching ‘three boys in a Bangalore workshop testing stitching’ (Anon in Adley et al., 2025 np). So this crashed headfirst into the very myth it challenged. 🙄 And Primark tried to silence its critics. They cried LIAR, FRAUD!!!

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The ‘footage could not be genuine’ (Primark in ibid). Primark even set up a website: ‘www.primarkresponse.com’, showing ‘what Primark had to do to expose this false claim and clear our name’ (ibid). What a MESS! Now. Over to one commenter, Siddy_06 🥲 : ‘What are we meant to dooo?! I wish someone would tell me, If I get what I would buy from another shop, who can guarantee they are not doing the same thing?’ (in ibid). YES, SIDDY_06. SCREAM IT. LOUDER. FOR. THE. PEOPLE. IN. THE. BACK. Who to believe!!!!!???? 😭

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Levine (2007) would probably argue that SIDDY_06’s scepticism wasn’t just ignorance or rejection – it was a complex, socially driven response to fear, stigma, and mistrust of authority in the trade justice movement. Just when you’ve understood that. Now, enter Wallace Heim (2003) who says the power of a documentary lies in sowing seeds for future rethinking – quiet mindset changes that bloom into something bigger.

Thanks for the mind f*ck Wall-Ace. But WTF is one meant to do! Scatter ✨effective✨ seeds into the wind and hope something grows (see Duncombe 2024)!? Actually….. maybe Wall-Ace has a point. 😑 If your film just tells the truth and holds it up to the light, maybe beautiful ✨effectiveness✨ will bloom. Honesty is the best policy, isn’t it?

TBF, the film Udita shows what’s possible by telling the truth. Screw the official story 🥱. The real truth lies in those who live and tell their stories (Zeng, 2017).

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Udita plunges you into the chaos before, during, and after the Rana Plaza disaster to reveal ‘an extraordinary and raw insight into the lives of the female factory workers in Bangladesh’ (Posh in Barker et al., 2025 np). It humanises garment workers 🙋🏽 by finding their unions ✊🏽 and letting them take the mic 🎤.

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It was ‘heart breaking’ (McCulloch in ibid) to watch; I know how they feel. This is so sad. ‘My heart goes out to the aged grandmother who lost her two daughters at Rana Plaza’ (Schon-Meier in ibid). 😢 But wait – pause the sadness for a second. ‘A lot of films and articles portray garment workers as victims’ (Minney in Ibid), but in Udita, these people are ‘inspiring on a global level’ (Hoskins in ibid)!

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OMG – THEN – ‘Trade unionists, workers’ rights activists, and local community groups will gather’ (Salmon in ibid). NOW WE’RE TALKING. BOOM! 💥 ! Governments started intervening! There was an ‘acceleration in legislative change in France’ (Evans in ibid) because ‘Rana Plaza was covered by newspapers, petitions of NGOS, film, and documentaries’ (ibid). Like this.

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There’s a well evidenced ‘X’ to ‘Y’ sequence here. You intend to show what’s possible with trade justice activism and to tell the truth about workers’ involvement in it. You use tactics that can humanise them, by finding their unions and letting them take the mic. This could lead to audiences responding with sadness about their struggles and/or inspiration about their achievements. And your film’s impacts could simply be the talk that it sparks about these tradwe justice struggles and the chance that – added to other activists’ work on this topic – this could help encourage governments to intervene.

But WAIT! ✋ Don’t grab your camera just yet. Time to pop your bubble again (for the last time). Just cus it worked in Bangladesh doesn’t mean you can Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V resistance (Demos, 2010). Grassroots power matters, but remember Morecambe…..? Rana Plaza…? They should have never F***ing happened in the first place!! 🤬. NGL, when the whole global economy runs on exploitation, chasing ✨documentary effectiveness✨ just looks like damage control (Harvey, 2010).

RIGHT, I’ve humoured this long enough!! Here’s the truth! I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW TO MAKE AN ✨EFFECTIVE✨ TRADE JUSTICE DOCUMENTARY! 😭 Cus if you’ve learnt anything on this commodities-lit, capitalist-infused, GEO3123 rant. It’s this! THERE IS NO SINGULAR CORRECT WAY! 😩 IT ALL ADDS UP! Real change is messy! It’s chaos! Contradiction and unexpected moments are what really move the trade justice movement along (Connor and Phelan, 2013).

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Now this is … awkward. After all this ranting, yes technically all the films I told you about were effective … just in their own ways. #AWKWARD 🤫🫣

HOWEVER! Here’s my theory of change for you. To be effective in the trade justice movement DON’T make a documentary. 🙅 Mic – Drop 🎤 Put the camera down. Take your budget, kit, and big activist dreams. Give them to the unions, co-ops, and grassroots groups already knee-deep in it. Do it for Grannie & Blessing in Mangetout. For Ai Qin & coworkers in Ghosts. For the boys in Primark: On the Rack. For the women in Udita. Supply chain workers don’t need retakes to show struggle. They live it! 💔

Rant Over.

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SOURCES

Patricia Aguiar, Jorge Vala, Isabel Correia & Cicero Pereira (2008) Justice in our world & in that of others: belief in a just world & reactions to victims. Social Justice Research, 21, 50-68.

Theo Barker, Joe Collier, Annabel Baker, Lizzie Coppen & Henry Eve (2025) UDITA (ARISE). (followthethings.com/udita.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)

Clive Barnett & David Land (2007) Geographies of generosity: beyond the ‘moral turn’. Geoforum 38(6), 1065-1075.

Tim Bartley & Curtis Child (2014) Shaming the corporation: the social production of targets & the anti-sweatshop movement. American sociological review 79(4) 653–679

+26 sources

Hélène Bohyn (2025) Omnibus Or Not, Due Diligence Is a Must: Policy Breakdown. Better Cotton, 31 March (https://bettercotton.org/omnibus-or-not-due-diligence-is-a-must-policy-breakdown/ last accessed 22 April 2025)

Gavin Brown & Jenny Pickerill (2009) Space for emotion in the spaces of activism. Emotion, Space and Society 2(1), 24-35

Stella Bruzzi (2018) From innocence to experience: the representation of children in four documentary films. Studies in documentary film 12(3), 208–224

Rosemary Campbell-Stephens (2021) Educational leadership & the Global Majority: decolonising narratives. Springer Nature.

Doyle Canning & Patrick Reinsborough (2012) Lead with sympathetic characters. (https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/tool/lead-with-sympathetic-characters last accessed 2 May 2025)

Lilie Chouliaraki (2010) Post-humanitarianism: humanitarian communication beyond a politics of pity. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 3(2), 107–126.

Harriet Clarke, Ben Thomson, Victoria Bartley, Katie Ibbetson-Price, Emma Christie-Miller & Harry Schofield (2025) Blood, Sweat & Takeaways. (followthethings.com/blood-sweat-takeaways.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)

Ian Cook et al (2025) Mangetout. (followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)

Ian Cook & Tara Woodyer (2012) Lives of things. in Eric Sheppard, Trevor Barnes & Jamie Peck (eds) The Wiley Blackwell companion to economic geography. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 226-241

Amy Coplan (2011) Understanding empathy: its features & effects. in Amy Complan & Peter Goldie (eds.) Empathy: philosophical & psychological perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2-18

Benjamin Cuff, Sarah Brown, Laura Taylor & Douglas Howat (2016) Empathy: a review of the concept. Emotion Review, 8(2), 144-153.

Stephen Duncombe (2023) A theory of change for artistic activism. The journal of aesthetics and art criticism 81(2), 260-268

Stephen Duncombe (2024) Æffect: the affect & effect of artistic activism. New York: Fordham University Press

Alice Evans (2020) Overcoming the global despondency trap: strengthening corporate accountability in supply chains. Review of International Political Economy, 27(3), 658-685

Adele Hambly, Elaine King, Andy Keogh, Camilla Renny-Smith, Ed Callow, Joe Thorogood & Vicky Alloy (2025) Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour. (followthethings.com/girl-model.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)

Irene Hadiprayitno and Sine Bagatur (2022) Trade Justice, Human Rights, and the Case of Palm Oil. in Elena V. Shabliy, Martha J. Crawford & Dmitry Kurochkin (eds) Energy Justice: Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 157-172

Wallace Heim (2003) Slow activism: homelands, love & the lightbulb. Sociological review 51(2), 183-202

Deena Kemp (2025) Comparing disgust and sadness: examining the interaction of emotion & information in charity appeals. Journal of Social Marketing (online early).

Roman Krznaric (2007) Empathy and the Art of Living. Oxford: Blackbird Collective

Genevieve LeBaron, Remi Edwards, Tom Hunt, Charline Sempéré & Penelope Kyritsis (2022) The ineffectiveness of CSR: understanding garment company commitments to living wages in global supply chains. New Political Economy, 27(1), 99-115.

Margaret A. McLaren (2019) Global gender justice: human rights & political responsibility. Critical horizons 20(2), 127-144

Daniel Miller (2001) The poverty of morality. Journal of Consumer Culture, 1(2), 225–243.

Jan Nåls (2018) The difficulty of eliciting empathy in documentary. In Catalin Brylla & Mette Kramer (eds) Cognitive Theory and Documentary. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 135-148.

Kate Nash & John Corner (2016) Strategic impact documentary: contexts of production & social intervention. European journal of communication 31(3), 227–242

Tony Roberts & Chris Lunch (2015) Participatory video. In Robin Mansell and Peng Hwa Ang (eds) The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society. London: Wiley, 1-6.

Tillman Wagner, Richard Lutz & Barton Weitz (2009) Corporate hypocrisy: Overcoming the threat of inconsistent corporate social responsibility perceptions. Journal of Marketing 73(6), 77-91

Erik Olin Wright (2015) How to be an anticapitalist today. Jacobin, 12 February

Image credits

Icon: conversation (https://thenounproject.com/icon/conversation-6769395/) by kliwir art from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)

Sainsburys Exeter Store: Lucian Harford (used with permission).

Handbook screengrabs: followthethings.com

Blood, sweat & takeaways screenshots: credit BBC.

Girl model screenshots: credit Carnivalesque Films

UDITA – credit Rainbow Collective

Mangetout: credit BBC

SECTION: advice

Written by Lucian Harford, edited by Ian Cook (first published June 2025)

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FEATURED EXAMPLES

Blood, sweat & takeaways
Girl model
UDITA
Mangetout

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INGREDIENTS

INTENTIONS

Improve pay & conditions
Show capitalist evils
Change citizen behaviour

TACTICS

Tell the truth
Have a theory of change
Humanise workers
Encourage empathy
Encourage feminist solidarities
Find a character
Include suffering kids
Spend some time
Workers take the mic!
Bring managers into view
Hold ’em accountable
Blame, shame & guilt
Encourage a boycott
Place things carefully
Make a website
Stage a Q&A

RESPONSES

I know how they feel
This is so sad
Capitalism is sh*t
Wow 💥 WTF?
I’m so angry
Oh shut up

IMPACTS

Now we’re talking
Activism is inspired
Activists are recruited
Corporations change
Workers’ pay & conditions improve

“Yes, it’s small. But that’s the point“

By Sophie Burden

IN BRIEF

Student Sophie Burden has taken the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter. She’s been watching trade justice documentaries, analysing the comments on their followthethings.com pages, and making sense of them using a draft copy of ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. She knows a thing or two about how trade justice documentaries work and what they can do. She’s been asked to imagine meeting a filmmaker who’s planning a new trade justice documentary. What advice could she give? Empathy is your best friend, but don’t get sloppy. Blame the right thing. And play the long game.

More about this page.

We are slowly piecing together a followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism and are publishing draft pages here as we write them. This is an ‘advice’ page. The main text is an example of student work from the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module which followthethings.com CEO Ian ran at the University of Exeter in the 2024-25 academic year. Students watched 8 films, and read their pages on followthethings.com (with the expeption of an unfinished film called The ginger trail). They were asked to pair the comments brought together on each of the films’ followthethings.com pages with the appropriate ingredients phrases (naming their intentions, tactics, responses and impacts – show in bold below) being drafted for the Handbook. Using these phrases as a pattern language (see FAQs), students were tasked to work out how specific intentions (e.g. improve workers’ pay & conditions) needed specific tactics (e.g. flip the script) to generate different kinds of responses (e.g. this is disgusting), which could generate different kinds of impacts (e.g. audiences are empowered). [NB pages about each of these ingredients are coming soon] At the end of the module, students were asked to imagine that they had met someone who was about to make their first trade justice documentary. Drawing on what they had learned in the module, what advice could they give them on how to make it effective?

So, you want to make a trade justice documentary that really makes a difference?

Great idea!

But let’s get one thing straight: effective doesn’t just mean making your audience cry into their £5 Primark hoodie. That’s easy. The hard bit? Sparking activism that actually changes things. You’ve got to wade into global trade’s murky world and make a dent, however small, to improve pay and conditions for the workers who keep it running.

That’s the heart of trade justice activism. It targets the deep unfairness baked into international trade – the fact that 85% of the world hustles to keep a privileged few comfy (Campbell Stephens, 2021).

It’s about telling the truth: exposing how the global economy puts corporate profit over human rights and workers’ dignity (Hadiprayitno & Bağatur, 2022, Miller, 2001). And asking: who’s really winning here?

Spoiler: it’s not the workers.

The goal? Democratise trade governance – fairness, sustainability, accountability. Your film can’t just show suffering; it’s got to hit harder. Rip back the curtain on capitalist evils and spark reflection that changes citizen behaviour.

And how do you get there? Enter your ✨ theory of change✨ . Duncombe (2023) calls it the Artistic Activism model: real change happens when activism blends emotion, ideas, and action. A great trade justice documentary makes us feel (empathy, anger), think (about justice, fairness, solidarity), and do (push for change).

Here’s how you make that happen…

Empathy is your best friend – but don’t get sloppy

You don’t just want audiences to witness suffering – you want them to feel it. That’s when you get under their skin.

Empathy is the magic sauce. “A pathway to audience engagement” (Nash & Corner, 2016). But fragile. Your mission? Make people care, not just pity. As Krznaric (2007) puts it, true empathy is an imaginative leap into someone else’s world.

But if all you spark is tears and a shrug, you’ve missed your moment. Empathy without direction? Dead end. Turn that feeling into something stronger: encourage [feminist] solidarities.

So how? First tactic: find a character. Or a few!

Canning & Reinsborough (2012) spell it out – personal stories are what hook people in and encourage empathy. Nåls (2018) adds: we need full human backstories, not snapshots. Dreams, struggles, strength. Faces, not faceless crowds.

That said – choose your characters wisely! Cough, Cough…..Blood, Sweat and Takeaways. Six Brits dropped into Southeast Asian factories to “lift the veil on voiceless workers” (Rees, 2009 in Clarke et al., 2025). But my standout memory of episode one: Olu, the bodybuilder, brawling in a tuna 🐟 factory and smashing a window 💥 . Iconic.. for all the wrong reasons. And wow, did viewers have thoughts t. “It was ruined by a fight” (Anon, 2009 in Clarke et al., 2025). “Our great nation couldn’t have chosen worse ambassadors” (Whitelaw, 2009 in Clarke et al., 2025). Yeah. Not quite the “takeaway” they were going for. 😬

Bonus tactic: include suffering kids. Brutal but effective. Bruzzi (2018) and Aguiar et al. (2008) show nothing hits harder than childhood innocence wrecked by adult-made systems. That’s emotional dynamite. 💣

Then: spend some time with workers. Humanise them. That’s how you swap sympathy for real empathy. Cook & Woodyer (2012) say good films “re-attach” workers to fetishised products, showing real people with struggles and strength. Slow it down, keep the footage raw (Cuff et al., 2016). Show whole lives – not just snapshots.

And now, the gold-standard examples.🏅

Girl Model. Forget glitz – this film drags us into the dark side of (child!) modelling. Following Nadya, 13, tape-measured, plucked from Siberian, bye family, flown to Japan, wide-eyed and hopeful. What unfolds? Debt, loneliness, shattered dreams – and one deeply creeptastic scout. The camera lingers, vérité-style, as her world cracks. (Tactics ✔ ✔ ✔ ). It worked. Viewers felt it. An “Uncomfortable, eerie….saddening” film that “sticks with you” (Almachar, 2012 in Hambly et al., 2025). “I wanted to give Nadya a hug, because I felt her pain” (DisturbedPixie, 2013, in Hambly et al., 2025). Bang – empathy landed. I know how they feel. 😎

Blood, Sweat and Takeaways? 🩸 💧 🍔 – Despite casting hiccups, it nailed key moments too. Six youngsters in factory grind, each with a backstory. Find some characters. Pick your Brit to feel with (Cuff et al., 2016). And the win? We met the workers – not props.. And the audience noticed. @myoldvhstapes (2022, in Clarke et al., 2025) summed it up: “The young woman….at the chicken plant spoke of her little son, her plans for his future, her need to make money for him.” Brass (2007, in Clarke et al., 2025) nailed the takeaway: “Migrants are portrayed as ordinary people, like us… same kind of hopes and fears.”

And when empathy lands? The classic: This is so sad. “It’s really sad” (CToppa, 2022, in Clarke et al., 2025). “Made me sad” (Season Bangla Drama, 2015, in Barker et al., 2025). People hook in and can’t shake it (Brown & Pickerill, 2009). Sadness sparks reflection (Kemp, 2025) – a win, but it’s only step one. As Chouliaraki (2010) warns, too much victimhood risks sliding into pity. We don’t want grief tourists or white saviours (McLaren, 2019). We want viewers moved to stand with, not just cry for, workers. Encourage empathy 🤝Encourage [feminist] solidarities.

One solution? Workers take the mic. 🎤 Participatory filmmaking, as Roberts & Lunch (2015) explain, lets workers represent themselves – as agents, not victims.

Enter Udita: the blueprint. Five years, no Western narrator, no saviours. Just Bangladeshi garment workers telling their own stories. Factory collapse, unimaginable loss, marches, unionising, fighting back. Raw. Unfiltered. Their pain, their determination – it was contagious. Henriksen (2015, in Barker et al., 2025) nails it: “There are no passive victims. Only men and women who fight for their rights.” 💪

So yes – encourage empathy.

But keep your eyes on the prize: empathy opens the door; solidarity kicks it down.

Blame the right thing

Right! We’ve ruffled some feathers now. Emotions are high, eyes are wide. But the real question: who’s to blame for all this pain?

Spoiler: not the consumer. ❌

We’ve all seen the blame, shame and guilt tactic in action. The classic move: “Look at your cheap T-shirt! Look what you’ve done!”

Sure, the thinking is noble – let guilt spark change (Barnett & Land, 2007). But in practice? It flops.

Guilt paralyses, triggers defensiveness, and sends audiences straight to ‘oh shut up‘ mode (Sandlin & Milam, 2008; McLaren, 2019).

Take Blood, Sweat and Takeaways. Guilt wasn’t the goal – but when you show British supermarkets and reel off stats about how much tuna we guzzle? It hit a nerve. As Simon (2009, in Clarke et al., 2025) groaned: “Now this programme wants to make me feel guilty about eating tinned tuna – one of the few stress-free meal options I thought I had left.” Me? Smug vegetarian mode activated: popcorn out, blaming my fish-loving friends. Not my problem.

Totally missing the point.

The message? Lost for me + Simon. Swapped for a dinner-time blame game.

And guilt-tripping? Not just unhelpful – downright unfair.

Sure, you could encourage viewers to boycott the product.

And resist endless marketing. And fight social pressure. And not shop like their friends. And spend more cash (but only on the right brands). And spot greenwashing. And cross-check the supply chain. And decode labels. And dig into corporate reports. Perhaps a degree in ethical consumption just to be sure. 😉

Fair? Yeah … no.

So, filmmaker: drop the guilt. If your film makes me feel like the villain? I’m out before the credits roll.

Instead. Pinpoint the villains and hold ’em accountable.

This is where your documentary punches up. ✊🏽

We’re talking corporations, governments, whole supply chains – the big players cashing in while workers sweat it out.

Your film’s job? Expose hypocrisies, rip open empty promises, and hit em where it hurts: reputation. Corporations love their glossy ethics reports – but Wagner et al. (2020) are clear: when words clash with reality, trust collapses. Your audience needs to see those cracks.

Expose. Humiliate. Shame. Them. (Bartley & Child, 2014). 😤 Mangetout nailed it. A wild ride for a humble pea: zooming between smug Brits at dinner parties and Zimbabwean fields where workers sweat for pennies. The kicker? Tesco’s buyer struts in like royalty, barking orders while workers beam – grateful for crumbs from the king’s table. A clever tactic: bring a manager into view – a villain. And it landed: “Tesco became ‘evil’ for me … when I saw [this] BBC2 documentary back in 1997” (Chapman 2010, in Cook et al 2025). Reputational damage delivered.

But don’t stop at brands. Zoom out.

Greedy supermarkets? A symptom. Capitalism = the disease 💸 – the “inequality-enhancing machine” (Wright, 2015) that keeps the whole circus spinning. Mangetout gives us a pea’s-eye view of global capitalism – bosses, farmers, consumers, trapped in a rigged game. McLaren (2019) warns, if you stop at human sob-stories without digging into the structures – you risk propping up the very hierarchies you set out to challenge. No pressure 😉

Your real win: not fixing corporations overnight, but shifting how citizens see them – and the broken system behind them. Harder to trust, harder to excuse, harder to ignore.

You want anger. ‘I’M SO ANGRY’ 😡 . Not that useless guilt-ridden kind – something better.

Slow, collective, empathic anger (Coplan, 2011). (Wink wink: thank yourself for planting those solidarity seeds earlier.) One Udita viewer nailed it: “It made me angry… United We Stand” (Season Bangla Drama, 2015 in Barker et al., 2025). Righteous fire aimed at the real culprits.

Capitalism is sh*t.

Here’s where Iris Young (2003) comes in clutch: it’s not about guilt – it’s political responsibility. We’re all tangled in this mess by everyday participation. Real change = Collective action. Pushing governments, corporations, the whole rigged game.

So let’s drop the tired “consumer blame” narrative. Your audience? They’re citizens, workers, voters, activists – with power way beyond their wallets (Hadiprayitno & Bağatur, 2021).

The long game

So, after all that righteous anger… change? It’s not coming fast. Sorry. But don’t lose hope. This is where the real magic kicks in.

Sadness fades. Anger cools. But conversations? They ripple.💧

That’s what turns a trade justice doc from a one-off gut punch into a long-haul political tool. Done right, these films slide into the cultural bloodstream – sparking awkward dinner-table debates, furious WhatsApps, late-night Googling.

Tiny shifts that start tipping the scales.

Heim (2003) calls it slow activism: quiet, persistent, woven through everyday life. No megaphones, no instant wins – but sticky + powerful.

Girl Model has no neat resolution, but it haunted. “I watched this movie a week ago and I cannot for the life of me get it out of my head” (Zippy, 2013 in Hambly et al., 2025). The dream: a film that gnaws and won’t let go. Wow 💥 WTF?

Turbo-charge those ripples! Nash & Corner (2016) say: stage Q&As, offer follow-ups, create spaces where people don’t just feel but figure out what’s next. Place things carefully.

Like Blood, Sweat and Takeaways. The BBC made a public web forum; viewers swapped tips, vented, planned. A “hub for people… discussing what we can do about it” (Christie-Miller, 2010 in Clarke et al., 2025). Now we’re taking.

Yes, it’s small. But that’s the point. Ripples grow networks, cement injustices in public memory.

And sometimes? They spark real-world wins. Activism is inspired.

Corporations can change. Mangetout + advocacy groups helped push Tesco into the Ethical Trading Initiative. Activists can be recruited. Girl Model saw one model-turned-activist pushing for legal reform.

Activism comes in all shapes: unionising, voting, campaigning, piling on pressure. More points of attack, stronger the punch. As Young (2003) reminds us: we’re all actors in this tangled system, each holding a sliver of responsibility.

The goal? Workers pay and conditions improve. But real change is slow, messy, and hard to pin down (LeBaron et al., 2022). No quick wins. Still, it beats flimsy “impact” stickers corporations love to flash and bury (Evans, 2020; Bohyn, 2025).

You won’t topple capitalism with a camera. But you can expose its cracks, pressure corporations to clean up, and – crucially – nurture a culture that refuses to forget. Wright (2015) spells it out: can’t topple it? Tame it (regulate). Escape it (build alternatives). Erode it (grow co-ops, unions).

Change is a marathon, not a sprint. Your film? One hell of a starting gun. 💥

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SOURCES

Patricia Aguiar, Jorge Vala, Isabel Correia & Cicero Pereira (2008) Justice in our world & in that of others: belief in a just world & reactions to victims. Social Justice Research, 21, 50-68.

Theo Barker, Joe Collier, Annabel Baker, Lizzie Coppen & Henry Eve (2025) UDITA (ARISE). (followthethings.com/udita.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)

Clive Barnett & David Land (2007) Geographies of generosity: beyond the ‘moral turn’. Geoforum 38(6), 1065-1075.

Tim Bartley & Curtis Child (2014) Shaming the corporation: the social production of targets & the anti-sweatshop movement. American sociological review 79(4) 653–679

+26 sources

Hélène Bohyn (2025) Omnibus Or Not, Due Diligence Is a Must: Policy Breakdown. Better Cotton, 31 March (https://bettercotton.org/omnibus-or-not-due-diligence-is-a-must-policy-breakdown/ last accessed 22 April 2025)

Gavin Brown & Jenny Pickerill (2009) Space for emotion in the spaces of activism. Emotion, Space and Society 2(1), 24-35

Stella Bruzzi (2018) From innocence to experience: the representation of children in four documentary films. Studies in documentary film 12(3), 208–224

Rosemary Campbell-Stephens (2021) Educational leadership & the Global Majority: decolonising narratives. Springer Nature.

Doyle Canning & Patrick Reinsborough (2012) Lead with sympathetic characters. (https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/tool/lead-with-sympathetic-characters last accessed 2 May 2025)

Lilie Chouliaraki (2010) Post-humanitarianism: humanitarian communication beyond a politics of pity. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 3(2), 107–126.

Harriet Clarke, Ben Thomson, Victoria Bartley, Katie Ibbetson-Price, Emma Christie-Miller & Harry Schofield (2025) Blood, Sweat & Takeaways. (followthethings.com/blood-sweat-takeaways.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)

Ian Cook et al (2025) Mangetout. (followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)

Ian Cook & Tara Woodyer (2012) Lives of things. in Eric Sheppard, Trevor Barnes & Jamie Peck (eds) The Wiley Blackwell companion to economic geography. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 226-241

Amy Coplan (2011) Understanding empathy: its features & effects. in Amy Complan & Peter Goldie (eds.) Empathy: philosophical & psychological perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2-18

Benjamin Cuff, Sarah Brown, Laura Taylor & Douglas Howat (2016) Empathy: a review of the concept. Emotion Review, 8(2), 144-153.

Stephen Duncombe (2023) A theory of change for artistic activism. The journal of aesthetics and art criticism 81(2), 260-268

Alice Evans (2020) Overcoming the global despondency trap: strengthening corporate accountability in supply chains. Review of International Political Economy, 27(3), 658-685

Adele Hambly, Elaine King, Andy Keogh, Camilla Renny-Smith, Ed Callow, Joe Thorogood & Vicky Alloy (2025) Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour. (followthethings.com/girl-model.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)

Irene Hadiprayitno and Sine Bagatur (2022) Trade Justice, Human Rights, and the Case of Palm Oil. in Elena V. Shabliy, Martha J. Crawford & Dmitry Kurochkin (eds) Energy Justice: Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 157-172

Wallace Heim (2003) Slow activism: homelands, love & the lightbulb. Sociological review 51(2), 183-202

Deena Kemp (2025) Comparing disgust and sadness: examining the interaction of emotion & information in charity appeals. Journal of Social Marketing (online early).

Roman Krznaric (2007) Empathy and the Art of Living. Oxford: Blackbird Collective

Genevieve LeBaron, Remi Edwards, Tom Hunt, Charline Sempéré & Penelope Kyritsis (2022) The ineffectiveness of CSR: understanding garment company commitments to living wages in global supply chains. New Political Economy, 27(1), 99-115.

Margaret A. McLaren (2019) Global gender justice: human rights & political responsibility. Critical horizons 20(2), 127-144

Daniel Miller (2001) The poverty of morality. Journal of Consumer Culture, 1(2), 225–243.

Jan Nåls (2018) The difficulty of eliciting empathy in documentary. In Catalin Brylla & Mette Kramer (eds) Cognitive Theory and Documentary. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 135-148.

Kate Nash & John Corner (2016) Strategic impact documentary: contexts of production & social intervention. European journal of communication 31(3), 227–242

Tony Roberts & Chris Lunch (2015) Participatory video. In Robin Mansell and Peng Hwa Ang (eds) The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society. London: Wiley, 1-6.

Tillman Wagner, Richard Lutz & Barton Weitz (2009) Corporate hypocrisy: Overcoming the threat of inconsistent corporate social responsibility perceptions. Journal of Marketing 73(6), 77-91

Erik Olin Wright (2015) How to be an anticapitalist today. Jacobin, 12 February

Image credits

Conversation (https://thenounproject.com/icon/conversation-6769395/) by kliwir art from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)

Blood, sweat & takeaways: credit BBC.

Girl model: credit Carnivalesque Films

UDITA: credit Rainbow Collective

Mangetout: credit BBC

SECTION: advice

Written by Sophie Burden, edited by Ian Cook (first published June 2025)

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FEATURED EXAMPLES

Ilha das Fores
Girl model
Mangetout
Blood, sweat & takeaways
UDITA
Ghosts
Primark – on the rack

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INGREDIENTS

INTENTIONS

Pop the bubble
Show capitalist evils
End violence & exploitation

TACTICS

Follow the people
Flip the script
Spend some time
Tell the truth
Show both sides
Make it funny
Workers take the mic
Juxtapose extremes
Hold ’em accountable

RESPONSES

These consumers are insane
I laughed my ass off
This is disgusting
Guilty as charged
I gotta do something
Silence your critics

IMPACTS

Corporations are punished

“Just showing up – again and again – can be the start of something.”

By Jock MacKinlay

IN BRIEF

Student Jock MacKinlay has taken the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter. He’s been watching trade justice documentaries, analysing the comments on their followthethings.com pages, and making sense of them using a draft copy of ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. He knows a thing or two about how trade justice documentaries work and what they can do. He reflects on what he’s learned about how these films work and what they can do. He centres capitalism’s commodification of objects and people, how filmmakers and their subjects can turn grief into power, and how this work can gently and persuasively unravel the logic of global trade.

More about this page.

We are slowly piecing together a followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism and are publishing draft pages here as we write them. This is an ‘advice’ page. The main text is an example of student work from the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module which followthethings.com CEO Ian ran at the University of Exeter in the 2024-25 academic year. Students watched 8 films, and read their pages on followthethings.com (with the expeption of an unfinished film called The ginger trail). They were asked to pair the comments brought together on each of the films’ followthethings.com pages with the appropriate ingredients phrases (naming their intentions, tactics, responses and impacts – show in bold below) being drafted for the Handbook. Using these phrases as a pattern language (see FAQs), students were tasked to work out how specific intentions (e.g. improve workers’ pay & conditions) needed specific tactics (e.g. flip the script) to generate different kinds of responses (e.g. this is disgusting), which could generate different kinds of impacts (e.g. audiences are empowered). [NB pages about each of these ingredients are coming soon] At the end of the module, students were asked to imagine that they had met someone who was about to make their first trade justice documentary. Drawing on what they had learned in the module, what advice could they give them on how to make it effective?

What makes a trade justice documentary effective isn’t just what it shows – it’s how it brings you into complicity. A tomato in Ilha das Flores. A child raising a Tesco flag in Mangetout. These aren’t just images. They’re arguments. And they don’t plead for change – they implicate. I’ve come to believe that the most powerful trade justice documentaries don’t persuade. They disrupt. They use irony, juxtaposition, grief, silence, repetition, and time to make global injustice unmissable – and unbearable.

Across this reflection, alongside learning from follow-the-things (2025) I draw on seven films from the module and analyse their techniques using ingredient phrases, emotional reactions, and viewer responses drawn from followthethings.com. I explore how films confront trade injustice – the structural exploitation baked into global supply chains that privilege profit and ownership over worker dignity (Chellan, 2023; Cook et al., 2002). Because if a documentary wants to challenge that system, it can’t just inform. It has to implicate. That’s the kind of effectiveness I’m tracing here

Commodification: objects and people

One way in which trade justice documentaries can be effective is by showing capitalist evils not through spectacle, but through logic – systems that make exploitation feel routine. Ilha das Flores made me laugh at first. The narration traced a tomato’s journey from plantation to middleman to supermarket shelf. It was absurd in its neatness – every movement tracked, measured, rationalised. But then came the landfill. The tomato was discarded, fed to a pig, and finally scavenged by children. By juxtaposing extremes, the film folds waste 🚮, animal 🐖, and human 🙋🏽 into the same supply chain. One viewer said: “I just felt like being sick… people who have to sift through garbage to find food” (Redroom Studios in Pavalow, 2025).🫣 I felt the same – but not because of the image. This is disgusting, I thought, because it felt so coldly logical – sicking not in tragedy, but routine.

Ryynänen et al. (2022) argue that disgust isn’t just emotional – it’s a moral alarm that ruptures what we accept as normal. This wasn’t an image designed to horrify. It became horrifying because I recognised it too late. Bloomfield and Sangalang (2014) describe juxtaposition as a “visual argument” – a structure that forces the viewer to connect what they’d rather keep apart. The film doesn’t explain the logic. It makes you feel it. Chellan (2023) helped me make sense of that discomfort: capitalism isn’t just cruel by accident. It’s a system that “privileges ownership over life.” Ilha das Flores doesn’t accuse. It implicates.

Girl Model continues this logic through quiet observation. Nadya, thirteen, is sized, and measured. There’s no voiceover. No commentary. Just a girl turned product. By following the people, the film shows how global capitalism doesn’t just move things – it moves bodies. “They are commodities. Easily replaceable” 😪 (Dowling in Hambly et al., 2025). I agreed – and that’s what disturbed me.😟 Wenzel (2011) calls this a “commodity biography”: a mapped transformation from subject to stock. I didn’t feel pity. I wasn’t the only one who felt guilty as charged, others agreed with me on followthethings.com “every person… [is] a collaborator or perpetrator of a… soul-sucking enterprise” (Anon, 2012e in Hambly et al., 2025). Not because I caused this – but because we all see models in every advert ever!!! Young (2003) calls this political responsibility: the moment you realise you’re inside the structure.

Whose pain are we watching?

If Section 1 left me wondering why I hadn’t noticed the violence sooner, these films show what happens when trade justice documentaries make that distance impossible to ignore – when they pop the bubble between comfort and consequence. In Mangetout, we begin at a Home Counties dinner party. Guests sip wine, eating mangetout, and debate “fairness” like it’s an abstract puzzle. Then, without warning, we cut to a Grannie, a Zimbabwean mangetout sorter discussing her suicide attempt. She’s calm. Precise. Not pleading – just speaking. By showing both sides, the film draws an initial equivalence between Global North opinion and Global South reality – but then cracks it open. One reviewer called it “the short and simple annals of the poor intercut with a champagne-fuelled dinner party” (Banks-Smith 1997 in Cook et al, 2025)

I agreed – but for me, it wasn’t just contrast. It was interruption. That’s what makes this technique effective – it shifts focus from guilt to voice. It asked who gets the last word. Cook et al. (2002) describe commodities as “economic DNA” – the buried trace of hands and histories. Mangetout doesn’t just reference that. It shows it. The peas aren’t just served. They’re stitched to lives. That’s what it means to pop the bubble: to let the dinner table speak back. Valenti (2020) warns that “balance” can become distortion when all voices aren’t equally free to speak. And by flipping the script, the film resists pity. The worker isn’t reduced to pain. Her voice carries its own narrative – one that didn’t need translation. Siddiqi (2009) calls this a refusal of “global moralism” – a rejection of pity and a reclamation of voice, where workers don’t need saving, just listening.

Blood, Sweat & Takeaways overwhelmed me in a different way. The British volunteers are exhausted. They break down in the factories. Cry into their hands. Scream at each other. These consumers are insane, I thought – not because they couldn’t cope, but because their breakdowns became the story. One reviewer nailed it: “ignorance and insouciance is the important flavour here… the BBC has carefully sifted all the good apples out to leave us only with the spoiled ones” (Sutcliffe 2009 in Clarke et al., 2025). Exactly. It didn’t feel like we were watching transformation. It felt like punishment – and the workers became props in that performance. Wood (2020) calls this “emotional optimisation”: where Western pain takes centre stage, and the system itself fades. It left me frustrated, not moved.

Grief into power

But not every film works through contrast. Some stay – showing what happens after the worst has already occurred. One way trade justice documentaries can be effective is by seeking to end violence and exploitation not through shock, but through duration – by staying with grief long enough for it to organise. In UDITA, we see two children walking through the wreckage of Rana Plaza. They see clothing in the rubble, labelled. Each tag still reads “Made in Bangladesh.” Later, their grandmother Razia stands among a crowd of women, fists raised, chanting for justice. One reviewer captured this transformation: “[Razia] now has to care for her daughter’s children… they walk over the rubble… each one has a Western label” (Anon 2015b in Barker et al., 2025). I kept noticing those labels. They weren’t just part of the debris – they were the thread connecting Razia’s grief to my comfort. That scene broke me 🫠😞- not because it was loud, but because it wasn’t. That’s what makes it effective: it invites presence, not pity.

That’s why this film works. It doesn’t just drop in to extract stories. It spends some time. Filmed over five years, UDITA captures the slow work of building trust – between filmmaker and subject, between worker and union. Robertson (2005) calls this “presence as method” – not just seeing, but staying. The camera doesn’t race. It follows Razia at a walking pace – into homes, into the streets, into grief. Evans (2020) describes this kind of duration as a way to break the “despondency trap”: when change feels impossible, just showing up – again and again – can be the start of something – exactly!!

Ghosts struck differently. The camera doesn’t narrate. It just watches Ai Qin, a real undocumented migrant worker, re-enact the moment of her survival. She stands on the roof of a white van as the tide rises, calling her son from the very bay where others drowned. I gotta do something, I thought. But it wasn’t guilt. It was something closer to reverence. “I won’t easily forget the shot of Ai Qin… [North Sea] waves about to engulf the van… making a final call to her son” (Sandhu 2007 in Allen et al, 2025). I couldn’t agree more – because it explained the scene, but because it admitted how unforgettable it was. That final call felt like it was for us. Richardson-Ngwenya and Richardson (2013) describe this as ethical representation: workers take the mic not through speech alone, but through presence. The silence becomes the point.

Unravel capitalism

But grief doesn’t just stay personal. Some films turn their lens toward systems – and ask who gets to speak when the damage is done. Effective trade justice documentaries aim to hold corporations accountable ✊ – not just by criticising them, but by showing how they fall short of ethical practice. In Mangetout, there’s a scene that almost dares you to laugh: the Tesco flag being raised, while schoolchildren sing the Tesco song 🎶🎶🎶 “Tesco our dear friend” 🎶🎶🎶 and dance the Tesco dance. “It’s not just bizarre,” I remember thinking. “It’s dystopian.” 👽👽 One reviewer described it bluntly: “The Tesco flag was raised while children sang the Tesco song and danced the Tesco dance” (Holt 1997 in Cook et al., 2025). It’s funny until you realise the brand is being treated like a country – with rituals, pledges, even propaganda. The scene never tells us what to think. It just lets the lie speak.

That’s the tactic: tell the truth by letting performance unravel itself. Bartley & Child (2014) argue that when corporations become the subject of focused critique – especially ones wrapped in ethical branding – they’re vulnerable to targeted shaming. Mangetout never yells. It just watches. The effect is stronger than accusation. Cook et al. (2015) describe this kind of visual strategy as one that turns “spectacle into satire” – without needing to say a word. They make it funny. The scene made me flinch – Tesco, this is disgusting. Then I laughed my ass off. Then I felt guilty as charged. So effective – because it didn’t instruct. It implicated. It made me ask why this had ever felt normal.

Primark: On the Rack hits differently. It shows what happens when corporations don’t just deny wrongdoing – they try to silence their critics. In response to the BBC’s undercover footage surrounding child labourers, Primark didn’t quietly back away. They launched an aggressive counter-narrative. “Millions of people have been deceived by Panorama,” one spokesperson declared. “Teachers and pupils… have been badly let down” (Primark 2008 in Adley et al., 2025). That tone stuck with me – not because it was firm, but because it felt scolding. Like they weren’t responding to a crisis – just punishing someone for pointing it out. That’s what it means to silence your critics: not to rebut, but to erase. Cook et al. (2018) call this the “Streisand effect” – where trying to bury a critique only makes it louder. It backfired. Corporations are punished not always in court, but through public exposure. And the louder the denial, the more visible the problem becomes.

Concluding thoughts

What I’ve learned is that effective trade justice documentaries don’t just expose injustice – they make it undeniable. Not with guilt, but with structure. With editing, juxtaposition, silence, re-enactment, and time. The most effective films don’t preach – they disorient. They hold back. They let injustice implicate itself. When I first watched Ilha das Flores, I thought the image of a woman scavenging waste would shock me. It didn’t. The shock came from the voiceover — that cold, rational tracking of a tomato’s value. That was my first lesson: effective trade justice films don’t just show harm – they reveal the logic behind it.

That logic reappears across the films that stayed with me: a model commodified, a corporation mythologised, a migrant re-enacting her own pain. None of these scenes told me what to feel. They let the structure speak – and made me realise I was part of it. If I were to make a trade justice documentary now, I’d focus less on persuading, more on positioning. I’d start with the worker. I’d spend time. I’d resist neat conclusions. Because effectiveness isn’t clarity – it’s complexity.

That’s what these films offered me: not closure, but craft. Not answers, but better questions. And a deeper understanding of how form can confront power – and why it must.

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SOURCES

Adley, K., Keeble, R., Russell, P., Stenholm, N., Strang, W. and Valo, T. (2025) Primark – on the rack. (http://followthethings.com/primark-on-the-rack.shtml last accessed May 14th 2025)

Allen, H., Heaume, E., Heeley, L., Hedger, R., Johnson, S., McGregor, O. and Webber, L. (2025) Ghosts. (http://followthethings.com/ghosts.shtml last accessed May 14th 2025)

Barker, T., Collier, J., Baker, A., Coppen, L. and Eve, H. (2025) UDITA (ARISE). (http://followthethings.com/udita.shtml last accessed May 14th 2025)

Bartley, T. & Child, C. (2014) Shaming the corporation: the social production of targets and the anti-sweatshop movement. American Sociological Review 79(4), p.653–679

+18 sources

Bloomfield, E. F. & Sangalang, A. (2014) Juxtaposition as visual argument: health rhetoric in Super Size Me and Fat Head. Argumentation and Advocacy 50(3), p.141–156.

Chellan, N. (2023). The life of capitalism. in his F/Ailing capitalism and the challenge of COVID-19. Leiden: Brill, p.180-216

Clarke, H., Thomson, B., Bartley, V., Ibbetson-Price, K., Christie-Miller, E. and Schofield, H. (2025) Blood, Sweat & Takeaways. (http://followthethings.com/blood-sweat-takeaways.shtml last accessed May 14th 2025)

Cook, I. et al., 2018. Inviting construction: Primark, Rana Plaza and political LEGO. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 43(3), p.477–495

Cook et al, I. (2025) Mangetout. (http://followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml last accessed May 14th 2025)

Cook et al, I. (2002) Commodities: The DNA of capitalism. (https://followtheblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/commodities last accessed May 14th 2025)

Cook, R.F., Vos, T.P., Prager, B. & Hearne, J. (2015) Journalism, politics and contemporarydocumentaries: a ‘Based on a True Story’ dossier. Visual Communication Quarterly 22(1), p.15–33

Evans, A., 2020. Overcoming the global despondency trap: strengthening corporate accountability in supply chains. Review of International Political Economy 27(3), p.658–685

Hambly, A., King, E., Keogh, A., Renny-Smith, C., Callow, E., Thorogood, J. & Alloy, V. (2025) Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour. (http://followthethings.com/girl-model.shtml last accessed May 14th 2025)

Pavalow, M. (2025) Ilha das Flores. (http://followthethings.com/ilhadasflores.html last accessed May 14th 2025)

Richardson-Ngwenya, P. & Richardson, B. (2013) Documentary film and ethical foodscapes: three takes on Caribbean sugar. Cultural Geographies 20(3), p.339–356.

Robertson, R. (2005) Seeing is believing: an ethnographer’s encounter with television documentary. in A. Grimshaw & A. Ravetz (eds) Visualizing anthropology. Bristol: Intellect Books, p.42–54

Ryynänen, M., Kosonen, H. & Ylönen, S. (2023) From visceral to the aesthetic: tracing disgust in contemporary culture. in their (eds.) Cultural Approaches to Disgust and the Visceral. London: Routledge, p.3-16

Siddiqi, D.M. (2009) Do Bangladeshi factory workers need saving? Sisterhood in the post-sweatshop era? Feminist Review 91(1), p.154–174

Valenti, J.M. (2020) When environmental documentary films are journalism. in Sachsman D. & Valenti, J.M. (eds) Routledge handbook of environmental journalism. London: Routledge, p.99-112

Wenzel, J. (2011) Consumption for the common good? Commodity biography film in an age of postconsumerism. Public Culture 23(3), p.573–602

Wood, R., (2020) ‘What I’m not gonna buy’: Algorithmic culture jamming and anti-consumer politics on YouTube. New Media & Society 23(9), p.2754–2772

Young, I.M. (2003) From guilt to solidarity: sweatshops & political responsibility. Dissent 50(2), 39-44

Image credits

Conversation (https://thenounproject.com/icon/conversation-6769395/) by kliwir art from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)

Ilha das Flores: credit Casa de Cinema de Porto Alegre

Girl model: credit Carnivalesque Films

Mangetout: credit BBC

Blood, sweat & takeaways: credit BBC

UDITA: credit Rainbow Collective

Ghosts: credit Beyond Films

Primark – on the rack: credit BBC

SECTION: advice

Written by Jock MacKinlay, edited by Ian Cook (first published June 2025)

FEATURED EXAMPLES

Ilha das Flores
UDITA
Primark – on the rack
Girl model
Mangetout
From India’s ginger fields to the table

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INGREDIENTS

INTENTIONS

Improve pay & conditions
Change consumer behaviour
Educate workers

TACTICS

Flip the script
Workers take the mic
Find the unions
Join with others
Encourage feminist solidarities
Find a character
Spend some time
Include suffering kids
Juxtapose extremes
Make it incomplete
Make Music
Encourage curiosity
Encourage detective work
Make it funny

RESPONSES

These people are inspiring
I’m humming that music
I laughed my ass off
I’m so angry
This is so sad
I just cried
This is disgusting
Creeperific
I get what it’s like
I gotta do something

IMPACTS

Now I know
Now we’re talking
I shop differently now
Audiences are empowered

“It’s funny how you can be so angry at someone who is just doing their job.”

By Katie Smart

IN BRIEF

Student Katie Smart has taken the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter. She’s been watching trade justice documentaries, analysing the comments on their followthethings.com pages, and making sense of them using a draft copy of ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. She knows a thing or two about how trade justice documentaries work and what they can do. She imagines meeting a filmmaker who’s thinking of making one of these films for the first time. He’s called Dan. He asks if she can give him some advice. She guesses he wants to present the hardships of Global South workers to Global North audiences. To do this, you’ve got to make it relevant, choose your audience, engage the right emotions, and make it memorable, she says.

More about this page.

We are slowly piecing together a followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism and are publishing draft pages here as we write them. This is an ‘advice’ page. The main text is an example of student work from the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module which followthethings.com CEO Ian ran at the University of Exeter in the 2024-25 academic year. Students watched 8 films, and read their pages on followthethings.com (with the expeption of an unfinished film called From India’s ginger fields to the table). They were asked to pair the comments brought together on each of the films’ followthethings.com pages with the appropriate ingredients phrases (naming their intentions, tactics, responses and impacts – show in bold below) being drafted for the Handbook. Using these phrases as a pattern language (see FAQs), students were tasked to work out how specific intentions (e.g. improve workers’ pay & conditions) needed specific tactics (e.g. flip the script) to generate different kinds of responses (e.g. this is disgusting), which could generate different kinds of impacts (e.g. audiences are empowered). [NB pages about each of these ingredients are coming soon] At the end of the module, students were asked to imagine that they had met someone who was about to make their first trade justice documentary. Drawing on what they had learned in the module, what advice could they give them on how to make it effective?

👋 Hiya Dan! 

You want to make a trade justice documentary???

Well, from what I’ve learnt in a Trade Justice module this year, your goal should be achieving two key outcomes: A) improve workers’ pay and conditions in the Global South, and B) change consumer behaviour in the Global North. These objectives are intertwined and can be approached through targeted filmmaking strategies.

First: check out Duncombe’s (2023) book . It’s all about theories of change and will give you the tools you need to make your documentary as impactful as possible. There are two main strategies you can use to achieve both A and B:

For A – use a materialist theory of change-this means seizing the “means of production” (Duncombe, 2023, p. 265) – here you could focus on the workers’ control over their own labour in the Global South.

For B – go with an activist theory of change-targeting emotions to “stir up the masses” (Duncombe, 2023, p. 265).

I’ll walk you through how various techniques can be used to empower workers in the Global South and spark emotional engagement in the Global North, to drive social change in Trade Justice.

Stage 1: make it relevant

Before diving into audience specifics, think about how you can ensure its relevance to the social context. This worked for Ilha das Flores, cuz it appeared during Brazil’s “democratization period” (Trujillo in Pavalow, 2025, np). The filmmaker, Furtado, could capture social issues when the audience was receptive to them, so that he could make a doc about social injustices.

But relevance alone won’t make your documentary effective. For instance, if you wanted to make a doc about Global South trade injustices, a topic like Trump and his tariffs threatening global supply chains might have to be watered down to comply with regulations for mainstream TV. Ilha das Flores works cuz it breaks from convention. weird!!! Furtado made it funny. The line in the screenshot above is both hilarious (I laughed my ass off) and random. Furtado can make a serious point about capitalist exploitation while entertaining; “funny at first, demolishing in the end” (Trufó in Pavalow, 2025, np).

This is SO effective cuz humour sparks public discussion better than “serious or emotional appeals” (Morreall in Cameron, 2015, p. 278). Conversations about their own complicity in global capitalist systems. Now we’re talking. If you want your documentary to be impactful AND be picked up by mainstream TV, make it current and make it funny to highlight the absurdities in supply chains.

Stage 2: choose your audience

As Duncombe (2023) speaks about in his Materialist Theory of Change, it is the material realities of workers’ lives that spur them into action. UDITA brings this theory to life; we see workers empower themselves – not just learning but fighting against “unsafe conditions” (Crawford in Barker et al 2025, np). The protagonist explains that five years ago the wage was $9/month; now it’s $68/month through campaigns. Your audience may resonate with unfairness and want to transform their own realities.

If you wanted to document the Bangladeshi protests over Trump’s tariffs, show what’s already happening to be effective for your intended audience. Show how material conditions, like uncertainty, are catalysts for organising. Find the unions, join with others that are already doing the same. Capture the “grassroots resistance” (Hoskins in Barker et al., 2025, np). YOU can help to apply pressure by documenting the ongoing struggle and building solidarity with these efforts.

In Bangladesh, document unions like the “National Garment Workers Federation” pushing for better conditions (Hoskins in Barker et al., 2025, np). Support the “Trade Justice Movement” of the Global South (Bannister and Bergan, 2023, p. 3). By showing workers that their fight can lead to change, they’ll think, “these people are inspiring”!! Audiences become empowered. The viewer could join a union themselves by seeing how collective bargaining can transform their realities.

BUT if your intention is to educate workers, are you sure they’ll even see the documentary? UDITA is on YouTube-accessible to anyone with a smartphone, which is lots of people nowadays. BUT … UDITA has low views. As Nora put it, “I’m so angry!!… UDITA needs more views!” (Nora in Barker et al., 2025, np). While it’s easy to make a doc accessible, getting the right people to watch it is a different challenge.

Primark – on the rack reached “4.2 million viewers” (Dowell in Adley et al., 2025, np). Good for awareness, BUT if your goal is to educate workers, think about “breadth” vs. “depth” (Duncombe, 2024, p. 71). Reaching millions is fine, but if they’re not the right people, impact is limited. Which are YOU aiming for?

Stage 3: engage the right emotions

If you choose to target a Global North audience, you need to think about how to engage them. You need to spark the right emotions- but avoid pity or sadness. From my Global North perspective, those emotions are passive and don’t drive real engagement.

Films like Girl Model and Primark – on the rack encourage empathy by:

Find a character -> spend some time -> include suffering kids

But does including children evoke the right emotions for activism (Brown and Pickerell, 2009)? Girl Model [left] shows “minors” in the exploitative modelling industry (Edelson in Hambly et al., 2025) …

while Primark – on the rack shows children working on garments (BBC Trust in Adley et al., 2025, np).

It’s hard not to feel something when you see children suffering, to empathise with their vulnerability, understand the world from their perspective (Krzanic, 2007). I was once young. The close-up shots help us to read their emotions too.

But empathy fades fast cuz the distance between myself, an able-bodied, privileged person-and these kids is huge!! I don’t get what it’s like. I’m feeling “for them” (Keen in Nåls, 2018, p. 145) not with them. Sympathy. Chouliaraki (2010) says victim-oriented campaigns turn the sufferer into an object we contemplate from afar. Us vs. Them. You can’t just show a victim, Dan, cuz look at the implications this has on Girl Model’s followthethings.com page: @DisturbedPixie, how is giving “Nadia a hug” (in Hambly et al., 2025, np) going to help in the grand scheme of activism? AWWWWWW. This is so sad. But sympathy can’t motivate action. Was I moved? Yes. Empowered? No. I just cried. I gotta do something. But what 🤔 ?

You HAVE to move emotions from “affective to æffective” (Duncombe, 2024, p. 46) – turning empathy into action. Otherwise, the film risks being an emotional spectacle without real impact.

So, Dan, evoke deep, “high-certainty” emotions, like anger and disgust (Kemp, 2025, p. 46), choose to shock and disrupt (Duncombe, 2024). How? Start by finding the right character. Shift your gaze from the teenage models to Ashley Arbaugh, the ex-model-turned-scout in Girl Model. She hides her camera to take non-consensual photos of girls. This is disgusting – creeperific.

Disgust is “visceral” (Ryynänen et al., 2023, p. 3) – something you feel. Going beyond ‘AWWWW’ for these girls, it unsettles you. Just the thought of Ashley still makes me squirm 🤢. That’s how you make a documentary that matters. I feel it. It’s memorable. For me, now I know. Disgust makes me rethink my consumer habits and drives me to support ethical brands. Feeling disgust at exploitative practices means I can no longer ignore my complicity. I shop differently now. Want to apply this approach? Look for an exploitative figure in the Bangladeshi unions. Spend time with them. If you capture something that sparks disgust, it’ll engage your audience. It worked in Girl Model – give it a try!

Stage 4: make it memorable

The tune didn’t “stop in silence” (Williamson & Jilka, 2014, p. 653). It followed me home, reciting it at Easter. Cut from the performance…

…to Grannie, “the farm’s ‘caterpillar examiner’ explaining how she tried to kill herself” 😱 (O’Malley in Cook at al., 2025, np):

Not so sweet anymore, is it, @Tongue? Me singing happily to myself at home only reminds me more of the exploitation-the unease lingers as the song is lodged. I’m thinking about my role as a consumer. Clever…

Another tactic to make ur doc memorable is juxtaposing extremes of people. This works because viewers must work hard to understand why you chose these contrasts, and that effort makes the message stick. In Mangetout, produce buyer Mark Dady, “the great man from Tesco” (Holt in Cook et al., 2025, np), struts in, while the farmers he “bullied” (Aaronovitch in Cook et al., 2025, np) praise him. Girl Model too uses a glaring contrast between Nadya and Ashley, placed on “opposite ends of the business” (Smith in Hambly et al., 2025, np). One is a vulnerable girl exploited for profit, the other a scout capitalising on that vulnerability. It’s funny how you can be so angry at someone who is just doing their job. But the way their lives fit together is atrocious to the audience 😤. This tactic can evoke anger – I spoke about strong emotions earlier. The hope is that these spark action (Kemp, 2025).

You can also make it memorable by doing something different. You can make it incomplete / encourage curiosity. As Cook (2015) argues, the excitement of discovering things for ourselves fuels curiosity and critical questions. An interatcive documentary called From India’s ginger fields to the table by Bharath Ananthanarayana, did this. Ananthanarayana (in Ananthanarayana, 2025, np) wanted to encourage detective work 🕵️‍♀️. Like he had invented a game – Cluedo meets documentary. Two-minute clips where my classmates and I choose the sequence. Boje (in Connor and Phelan, 2013) developed an antenarrative approach, which Ananthanarayana uses. Through jumbled clips which unsettle “ordered narratives” (Connor and Phelan, 2013, p. 150), Ananthanarayana documents the many stories circulating within the narrative. My first clip was “Labouring the Field” (Ananthanarayana, 2025). One shot of digging 🪏, the only sound being the rhythmic thwack of labour.

Then, I chose a sequence called “How It Began”. Wait-shouldn’t this have come first? Nope. Ananthanarayana hands the audience choice of how the story unfolds. That’s influential: just like how I have the power to create the story of documentary, I have the power to choose how I source commodities in my life. Dan, if you want people like me to feel that urgency of ‘I gotta do something’, you need to make them actively involved in the process – like Bharath did. Make them feel they have a part to play in changing the system.

By engaging the right emotions, you can create real impact. For me, I now know about the exploitation behind commodities like mangetout and girl models – that I had no clue about before. No longer ignorant. The deeper emotions inspired me to talk. Even this small step leads to change. Now we’re talking 🗣️ 💬. This is the impact you should aim for, Dan, cuz by sharing these films, the conversation passes through the “social realm” (Heim, 2003, p. 187), raising awareness and demystifying exploitation. Even by talking/singing to my dad about Mangetout, I’ve pushed the conversation outside “traditional art and activism worlds” (Duncombe, 2024, p. 74).

So, see what you can achieve for workers in the Global South and audience members in the Global North audience by thinking about all these things. Let me know what approach you decide to take!

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SOURCES

Adley, K., Keeble, R., Russell, P., Stenholm, N., Strang, W. & Valo, T. (2025) Primark – on the rack. (followthethings.com/primark-on-the-rack.shtml last accessed 28 March 2025).

Ananthanarayana, B. (2025) Untitled [Q&A video & transcript], GEO3123: Geographies of material culture. University of Exeter.

Bannister, L. & Bergan, R. (2023) A timeline of UK trade and trade justice. London: Trade Justice Movement.

Barker, T., Collier, J., Baker, A., Coppen, L. & Eve, H. (2025) UDITA (ARISE). (followthethings.com/udita.shtml last accessed 28 March 2025).

+16 sources

Brown, G. & Pickerell, J. (2009) Space for emotion in the spaces of activism. Emotion, Space & Society, 2, 24–35.

Cameron, J. D. (2015) Can poverty be funny? The serious use of humour as a strategy of public engagement for global justice. Third World Quarterly, 36(2), 274-290

Chouliaraki, L. (2010) Post-humanitarianism: humanitarian communication beyond a politics of pity. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 3(2), 107–126.

Connor, T. & Phelan, L. (2013) Antenarrative and Transnational Labour Rights Activism: Making Sense of Complexity and Ambiguity in the Interaction between Global Social Movements and Global Corporations. Globalizations, 12(2), pp. 149–163

Cook, I. (2015) Be curious. Find out. Do something. European Year of Development (https://web.archive.org/web/20150402052050/https://europa.eu/eyd2015/en/fashion-revolution/posts/be-curious-find-out-do-something last accessed 10 April 2025)

Cook, I., et al. (2025) Mangetout. (followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml last accessed 28 March 2025).

Duncombe, S. (2023) A theory of change for artistic activism. The Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism, 81, 260–268

Duncombe, S. (2024) Aeffect: The Affect and Effect of Artistic Activism. 1st ed. New York, NY: Fordham University Press.

Hambly, A., King, E., Keogh, A., Renny-Smith, C., Callow, E., Thorogood, J. & Alloy, V. (2025) Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour (followthethings.com/girl- model.shtml last accessed 28 March 2025).

Heim, W. (2003) Slow activism: homelands, love & the lightbulb. Sociological Review, 51(2), pp. 183-202.

Kemp, D. (2025) Comparing disgust and sadness: examining the interaction of emotion & information in charity appeals. Journal of Social Marketing (online early).

Krznaric, R. (2007) Empathy & the Art of Living. Oxford: Blackbird.

Nåls, J. (2018) The difficulty of eliciting empathy in documentary. in Brylla, C. & Kramer, M. (eds.) Cognitive Theory and Documentary. Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan, p.135-148.

Pavalow, M. (2025) Ilha das Flores. (followthethings.com/ilhadasflores.html last accessed 28 March 2025).

Ryynänen, M., Kosonen, H. & Ylönen, S. (2023) From visceral to the aesthetic: tracing disgust in contemporary culture. in their (eds.) Cultural Approaches to Disgust and the Visceral. London: Routledge, p.3-16.

Williamson, V. & Jilka, S. (2014) Experiencing earworms: an interview study of involuntary musical imagery. Psychology of Music, 42(5), 653-670

Image credits

Conversation (https://thenounproject.com/icon/conversation-6769395/) by kliwir art from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)

Ilha das Flores: credit Casa de Cinema de Porto Alegre

UDITA – credit Rainbow Collective

Primark on the rack: credit BBC.

Girl model: credit Carnivalesque Films

Mangetout: credit BBC

From India’s ginger fields to the table: credit Bharath Ananthanarayana

Handbook: credit followthethings.com

SECTION: advice

Written by Katie Smart, edited by Ian Cook (first published June 2025)

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Hiatt shackles

Made in England
Worn in Cuba

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KEY FACTS

Type:
Protest & activist campaign
Dates:
8 Sept 2005 & 1 Jan 2007
Organisers:
Amnesty International, Reprieve, Save Omar Campaign, Birmingham Guantanamo Campaign, Muslim Public Affairs Committee
Location:
Hiatt & Co., Baltimore Road, Birmingham, UK

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INGREDIENTS

INTENTIONS

Change government behaviour
Change corporate behaviour

TACTICS

Target the right brand
Hold ’em accountable
Put your bodies in the way
Embody exploitation
Make the hidden visible

RESPONSES

There is no alternative
Who’s responsible?

IMPACTS

Corporations change
Workers suffer

Image credit

followthethings.com

Tackle the shackles

IN BRIEF

British citizens are detained in the USA’s Guantanamo Bay detention centre, but none are charged with a crime. They notice the shackles restraining them are ‘Made in England’, just like them. When some go on hunger strike in 2005, and when the 5th anniversary of the centre’s opening takes place in 2007, musicians, doctors, lawyers, comedians and activists protest outside the factory where they are made. Their use at Guantanamo, they argue, is unethical and illegal.

How to read this page

We are slowly piecing together a ‘followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’ and are publishing the pages here as we write them. This is an ‘example’ page. The wide column paraphrases and condenses this example’s followthethings.com page, section by section. The narrow column contains some details about the commodity, some key facts about the activism that took place around it, and a list of its ‘ingredients’: its intentions, tactics, responses and impacts. These have been identified during the writing of this example page and, as more handbook pages are added, you will be able to click each one to read about it, and there will be links to other examples where we have found that ingredient, and a list of linked ingredients. This hypertext format, we believe, will help readers to understand how trade justice activism can work, and what it can do.

Original

Description

Human rights activists wearing Hiatt shackles protest outside Birmingham factory where they are made. A band plays on a flatbed truck as 20 people dressed in orange Guantanamo Bay jumpsuits dance the ‘Shackle Shuffle’. Comedian Mark Thomas, doctor David Nicholls, human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith and the brother of Omar Deghayes, a hunger-striking British detainee, climb up to speak. Media, police and locals watch them accuse Hiatt of being complicit in, and profiting from, this torture and illegal detention. 14 months later, 70 or 80 are back in orange to ‘celebrate’ the fifth anniversary of Guantanamo’s opening. Sandy Mitchell, tortured in Saudi Arabia in Hiatt shackles, speaks and returns his shackles through the factory’s letterbox. A birthday cake is made for Hiatt with a detainee inside. This old company made ‘n***er collars’ for the slave trade. ‘If William Wilberforce were alive’, Nicholls says, ‘he’d be standing here today, doing the Shackle Shuffle, saying ‘this is outrageous’’. The UK government, with its ‘ethical foreign policy’, should press the US to charge the detainees with their crimes, or set them free.

Inspiration / process / methodology

The Three Piece Suit chains your hands in front of you and attaches to a waist belt. Another chain links the belt to your ankle where a foot-long chain ties both feet together so you can only shuffle, not walk. They can tie you to a ring in the floor, as you stand or squat, or to a ceiling or the top of a cage where you can hang, for hours. Each has ‘Hiatt’, ‘Made In England’ stamped into it, British detainees told their lawyer, Stafford Smith. ‘It was ironic’, Moazzem Begg said, that they were ‘made in England, just like me and him’. Nicholls wrote to Hiatt to stop US sales while their goods were being used for torture. ‘This is what happens when you don’t answer your post’, he said at the protest. In 2007, NGOs published media and campaign packs to coordinate actions and focus messages. Local MPs joined in. These protests were national news.

Discussions / responses

I’d love to see President Bush and Prime Minsiter Blair shackled outside the factory. A freedom of information request was refused as not in the ’public interest’. It wouldn’t make a difference if Hiatt ceased production. Others would make shackles and Hiatt’s employees would lose their jobs. If the factory shut, its new US owner Armor Holdings could blame the protestors. Factories were shutting all around. At least this one was still making things. And maybe the Guantanamo shackles were old stock, exported years ago, before the UK export ban. Maybe they started as legally-exported handcuffs and were modified in the US? Shackles aren’t illegal there. We weren’t aware of supplying Guantanamo, Hiatt said. We do sell to the US Department of Defence but we’re not responsible for what they do with stuff, said Hiatt. They don’t tell you to cuff someone to the top of a door, do they?

Impacts / outcomes

Hiatt’s Birmingham factory shut in 2008 and 15 people lost their jobs. This followed a consolidation process by BAE Systems who bought Armor Holdings in July 2007. Production shifted to a Hiatt factory in New Hampshire, USA, nearer its customer base, to be stamped ‘Made in USA.’ UK police bought Hiatt handcuffs on eBay. The Hiatt brand was dropped. Protestors were glad that one less British company was supplying equipment for use in Guantanamo.

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FOLLOWTHETHINGS.COM PAGE

Shifrina, D. (2013) followthethings.com/tackle-the-shackles

BACK TO HANDBOOK CONTENTS PAGE 👉

DEPARTMENT: Security

By Ian Cook (June 2025)