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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)