Be the character – Page 2 – followthethings.com

Posted on November 10, 2024January 8, 2025 by Ian Cook

Hugh’s Chicken Run

Hugh [sobbing]: "I really don't want to kill another bird this morning'.
Hayley: 'You can afford free range. I can't. This is what I can afford.'
Hugh: 'To my delight, the response has been amazing. People really do care about chickens.'
Hugh: 'So, you are selling out of free range chickens'. Supermarket manager: 'We are'.

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Grocery

TV DOCUMENTARY SERIES

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

“Hugh’s Chicken Run“
A three-episode TV series hosted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for Channel 4 TV’s ‘Food Fight’ season.
Screengran slideshop embedded above. Search online to watch episodes here. Channel 4 episode guide here.

Private School-educated celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall takes part in a season of actvist-themed ‘Food Fight’ TV programmes on the UK’s Channel 4. His Hugh’s Chicken Run series has three episodes. He wants to persuade the shoppers of his home town of Axminster in Devon to stop buying factory-farmed chickens. You can get 2 for £5. The animal welfare issues are horrendous. And he wants the UK’s supermarket chains to stock free range alternatives to give consumers a choice. But how can he do this? He tries all sorts of tactics. For different audiences. He educates consumers in a supermarket carpark about the cramped and unsanitary conditions for factrory farmed chickens. He can’t get access to film in a commercial chicken farm, so he sets up one himself, runs it for a while, and invites cheap chicken consumers to see where their food comes from. He works with residents on a low income housing estate in the town to keep rear their own chickens. This is where he meets single mum Hayley, who ends up being the ‘mother hen’ of the project. He lobbies the supermarkets throughout the series to improve animal welfare standards. At the end of the series, he bumps into Hayley at the supermarket. She’s just bought a couple of cheap chickens. Noooo. His experiment hasn’t worked. But she’s defiant. She can’t afford what he would like her to eat, even though she agrees with everything he’s doing. He has reached, some critics say, the limit of consumer-based and celebrity activism. He’s trying to appear to ‘ordinary shoppers’, but he doesn’t understand ‘ordinary’ realities. He’s a posh boy who went to Eton. But the supermarkets do respond to his activism. And to his activism documented in follow-up programme Hugh, Chickens & Tesco Too. There are more free range chickens in the shops as a result of this series. But is that enough? Surely anyone seriously concerned about animal welfare would be advocating veganism as the alternative? Wouldn’t that be better for the chickens? What we like about this example is what it does and doesn’t do, how it does and doesn’t work, what it includes and what it leaves out. It’s open about being imperfect.

Page reference: Ellie Beattie, Fliss Browner, Rose Hughes, Rosie Marsh, Joe Parrilla, Alice Raeburn & Maddie Redfern (2024) Hugh’s Chicken Run. followthethings.com/hughs-chicken-run.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 67 minutes.

Posted on November 4, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Big Boys Gone Bananas!*

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Grocery

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

CULTIVATE RELATIONSHIPS

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

INCLUDE A BOYCOTT

INCLUDE EMOTION

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“Big Boys Gone Bananas!*“
A documentary film directed by Fredrik Gertten for WG Film AG, Sweden
Free trailer and on-demand stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here.
The second of two films on this topic. The first is “Bananas!*”. See our page on this here. See the films’ website here.

Swedish documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten and his small film company team are looking forward to the premiere of their courtroom documentary Bananas!* at the Los Angeles Film Festival. It follows a class action case in the California courts where a group of Nicaraguan Banana farm workers hold the Dole corporation accountable for their sexual impotence by making them use an agrochemical that had been banned because it caused it. Their case is put together by a California-based attorney, and the documentary includes grainy in-court testimony not only by the farmers but also by the Dole bosses who made the decision to continue using that agrochemical. The film documents a success story, more or less, with significant financial compensation being awarded to the workers. This is a test case. The first of its kind. So more cases will follow. More costs for Dole. More embarrassment. So Dole fights back, mounting a sophisticated public relations campaign to discredit the case (charging its lawyer with fraud) and the film (claiming it’s uncritically promoting this lawyer’s fraud). This campaign starts before the film has been screened. By people who have not seen it. News articles appear reporting that the film is a fraud. The festival is forced to withdraw it from competition, to show it at a remote theatre, and the festival director has to read out a disclaimer before it’s shown there. Then negative reviews start to appear as soon as it’s seen. Can this seemingly coordinated effort to silence corporate critique succeed? What would you do as a filmmaker if this happened to you? Gertten does what he knows best. He turns his camera on and makes a film about Dole’s attempts to discredit his film. He steps out from behind the camera to become its central character. Unbelievable things are happening to him, to the people he works with, and to the film they made together. But his film company had taken out an insurance policy that allowed them to pay for expensive legal help to fight back. They cleverly coordinate an counter-information and crowndfunding campaign. And a surprising international collection of allies come to their aid. Dole’s efforts to censor Bananas!* are a complete failure and, more than anything, make it and this Big Boys sequel a 100% must see double-bill for anyone interested in trade justice actvism. Read below to see how this story unfolds. It’s a genuine ‘David vs. Goliath’ story. You could never make this up! There’s so much to learn from this. Buckle up.

Page reference: Camilla Muirhead, Katie Lambert, Katie Joyce, Will Sensecall, Izzie Snowden, Matt Creagh & Harry Cousens (2020) Big Boys Gone Bananas!*. followthethings.com/big-boys-gone-bananas.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 1 hour 53 minutes.

Posted on October 14, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle

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Home & Auto

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

CHANGE CITIZEN BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

“Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle“
A music video by Sofia Ashraf published on YouTube.
Embedded in full above.

Chennai rap musician Sofia Ashraf’s Nicki Minaj-sampling protest song ‘Kodakainal Won’t’ goes viral on YouTube in 2015, drawing attention to a Unilever factory in India dumping mercury into the environment. A year later, she releases this video to draw attention to the most notorious industrial disaster in Indian history: an explosion at the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal in 1984 which released poisonous gas that killed more than 15,000 people and sickened over half a million more. A campaign has been running ever since for the victims to be compensated and the toxic legacy of the explosion to be cleaned up, even after Union Carbide was bought by Dow Chemical. Ashraf revived a rap written and performed in 2008 to support an NGO petition to the US Government’s Department of Justice to hold Dow Chemical to account. If the petition reaches 125,000 signatures, the DoJ is obliged to respond. In the video, Ashraf performs both sides of the argument as she sees it: the Indian activist side calling Dow Chemical to account, and the US government’s disdainful approach to those demanding compensation. The video encourages people to sign the petition. The 125,000 goal is reached. But what does this unlock? What can protest music do for trade justice activism?

Page reference: Nicole Sparks, Ginny Childs, Allie Short, Kat Cook, Lauren Warner & Sophie Wolf (2016) Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle (taster). followthethings.com/dow-vs-bhopal-a-toxic-rap-battle.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Posted on September 20, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Oil Road: Journeys From The Caspian Sea To The City Of London

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Home & Auto

2012

BRITISH PETROLEUM

CRUDE OIL

SOURCED IN AZERBAIJAN

USED IN EUROPE

PUBLICATION

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

TELL THE TRUTH

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

REACH NEW AUDIENCES

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

KNOW YOUR HISTORY

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

“The Oil Road: Journeys From The Caspian Sea To The City Of London”
A non-fiction travelogue by James Marriott & Mika Minio-Paluello, published by Verso.
Google Books preview embedded above.

‘Oil corporation resisters’ James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello travel the length of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline which carries crude oil from Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea oilfields to refineries in Europe and, from there, into the region’s cars, buses & other oil-burning machines. They find this oil’s human stories, secret places and complex connections, and companies and governments that don’t want them to be revealed. They investigate how British Petroleum – which operates and co-owns it – wields incredible power over the governments of the countries the pipeline passes through that it is able to sweep aside everyone and everything in its path. The Oil Road paints a picture of the West’s ‘energy imperialism’ and insatiable addiction to oil. But this is far from a dry academic or NGO report of ‘energy security’ and oil geopolitics. Rather, it’s a vivid piece of industrial / infrastructural travel writing. A page-turning detective thriller that’s accessible to readers who don’t identify as oil-geeks. The authors use a familiar road trip format for political advocacy, to ‘show the filthy entrails of the global economy close up’, as one commenter puts it. Some commenters rage at BP, and/or say the authors are obviously a biased against BP, and/or bemoan the lack of alternatives and/or express greater worries about the ‘carbon web’ that the book vividly – but only partly – reveals. This is thing-following in multiple ways. It follows oil along a pipeline. It follows the pipeline itself. And it follows the money generated by the oil flowing along the pipeline.

Page reference: Molly Mansfield, Louise Ford, Olivia Rogers, Millie Smith, Bryony Board & Charlotte Watts (2013) The Oil Road. followthethings.com/the-oil-road.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 33 minutes.

Posted on September 20, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

China, Britain And The Nunzilla Conundrum

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Gifts & Seasonal

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

FIND LOST RELATIONS

MAKE IT FUNNY

“China, Britain And The Nunzilla Conundrum“
A radio documentary presented by Anna Chen (a.k.a. Madam Miaow), produced by Sally Heaven for BBC Radio 4.
Audio clip embedded above. Listen to the full radio documentary on the BBC website here (when available, with account, screengrab above) and on Box of Broadcasts here (with University subscription).

Chinese-English comedian and writer Anna Chen loves kitsch, ‘tat’, and (to some) offensive ‘stocking filler’ gifts like the clockwork fire breathing nun ‘Nunzilla’ and ‘Dashboard Jesus’ (not to mention elastic band holder ‘Mummy Mike’ and singing fish ‘Billy Bass’). Unsurprisingly, they’re ‘Made in China’ but, she wants to find out, what do they tell us and the people who design and make them about Western culture, religion and values? What gets lost and found in translation? And what do the factory workers who make them think they are for? How do they imagine the people who buy them? And what can tracing the relations between the designers, makers and consumers of cheap plastic kitsch tat tell us about China-UK relations? This is a serious piece of cross-cultural commodity following. It’s enjoyable and worrying. But there aren’t any exploited workers. What’s it hoping to achieve?

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) China, Britain And The Nunzilla Conundrum. followthethings.com/china-britain-and-the-nunzilla-conundrum.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes.

Posted on September 16, 2024January 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story

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Recycle my waste

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story“
A documentary film written by Jenny Rustemeyer Grant Baldwin, directed by Grant Baldwin for Silvapark Films.
Trailer and on-demand Vimeo stream embedded above. Search the internet for other streaming options here.

Most trade justice activism looks back down the supply chain from the point of consumption. It looks at all the materials, human and other lives bound up in commodities. It asks how they could be brought together in more sustainable, more ethical, ways. The sheer volume of resources inside even the most basic thing can be astonishing. Just as astonishing are the mountains of unsold commodities that go to waste. All those resources and all that work that went into making commodities that aren’t consumed! It’s shocking. So, filmmakers Jenny Rustemeyer and Grant Baldwin challenge themselves to live on thrown-away food for six months. They document how they get on with this experiment in a diary-like film. All the little details of their life, the decisions they make, are shared with the audience. People throw perfectly good food away at home, so maybe rummage through their bins. Then they discover the hidden world of supermarket dumpsters that contain discarded out-of-date food. They find and join local networks of dumpster-divers who specialise is finding, emptying, distributing and eating what’s in them. But what kind of diet do you end up living on when this is how you shop? How many lasagnes can you squeeze into your freezer? Do you fancy eating lasagne every day? Would you try this zero cost ethical food shopping? What can audiences learn about the food industry’s inevitable production of waste? They call on some experts to explain.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story (holding page). followthethings.com/just-eat-it-a-food-waste-story.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Posted on September 14, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Find Your Doppelganger

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Apps

2015

UNBRANDED

PHOTO APP

DOPPELGANGERS WORLDWIDE

USED WORLDWIDE

PHONE APP CONCEPT

POP THE BUBBLE

ENCOURAGE DETECTIVE WORK

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

“Find Your Doppelganger“
A concept for a mobile phone app submitted by Rachel Grant as part of a BA Geography dissertation at the University of Exeter, UK.
Full concept text below.

Student Rachel Grant likes to try out the latest apps on her smartphone. She’s tried ones that tell you which celebrity you look like. That’s OK. But there’s a photographer who finds unrelated people who look exactly alike. The technical terms is doppelganger. He arranges for them to meet, photographs them together and finds they feel connected, like lost relations. So what if there was a phone app – like the ones that help you find your celebrity lookalike – that could scan your face and introduce you to your supply chain doppelganger? A garment worker? A tungsten miner? A tea picker? A delivry driver? A plastic recycler? Someone who helped to make your stuff? Might you feel more empathetic towards supply chain workers if they looked like you? Would it be easier to imagine walking in their shoes? What if the ‘Find Your Doppelganger’ app gave you the chance to chat? What if you met up? What impact could meeting a lost ‘relation’ like this have on you?

Page reference: Rachel Grant (2024) Find Your Doppelganger. followthethings.com/doppelganger.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024February 4, 2025 by Ian Cook

Primark – On The Rack

"A little deeper into the squalour and another rung down the ladder of exploitation. Children. Several young boys working on the same Primark vest we saw those women sewing earlier...
... one could be as young as 9 or 10. They're testing the stitching so the sequins don't end up falling off in the hands of customers back in Britain. When we asked their ages, their manager kept silent."
[The film then briefly shows the vest's 'atmosphere' label. This is a Primark band promising customers affordable fresh fashion]

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Fashion

“Primark – on the rack“
A documentary film presented by Tom Heap & produced by Frank Simmonds with Dan McDougall for BBC TV’s Panorama series.
Screenshot slideshow of the contested scene embedded above. Watch on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.

The BBC produces an exposé of cheap clothing retailer Primark. It finds children making its clothes, and sewing and testing their sequins, in factories, slums and refugee camps in India. Primark is asked to contribute to the film before it’s shown. Instead, they decide to cut ties with the supply chains featured, then launch a website to counter the film’s claims. They research the film’s research to pick apart its claims, and then complain to the BBC that one 45 second scene (the one in the screenshots above) is fake. Their critic-silencing strategy has mixed success. The BBC is forced to admit that it cannot be 100% sure that the scene wasn’t faked, and the Panorama team are forced to hand back an award they were given for the film. But Primark’s persistent public attempts to silence this investigative journalism draws attention – for years – to the company’s reputation as the ‘poster boy of child labour in the UK’. Supporters of the film highlight the other 3,555 minutes of the film that Primark didn’t claim the producers had faked? Then, 5 years after the film was broadcast, the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapses and over a thousand garments workers are crushed to death making high street clothes. Journalists, filmmakers and others keep this tragedy relentlessly in the news. UK newspaper headlines refer to this as the ‘Primark factory’. There’s no way that this footage is fake. Primark has to react differently this time.

Page reference: Kate Adley, Richard Keeble, Pippa Russell, Noora Stenholm, William Strang and Tuuli Valo (2025) Primark – on the rack. followthethings.com/primark-on-the-rack.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 124 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024January 28, 2025 by Ian Cook

Where Am I Wearing?

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Fashion

“Where Am I Wearing? A Global Tour To The Countries, Factories, and People that Make Our Clothes“
A non-fiction book written by Kelsey Timmerman and published by Wiley.
Google Books preview embedded above.

Self confessed ‘All-American Guy’ Kelsey Timmerman is curious about the ‘Made in…’ tags in his favourite clothes. He wants to go to those countries and meet the people who made them for him. So he sets off around the world to meets workers in each place. But he doesn’t work alongside them or quiz them about their pay and conditions. He wants to get to know them as people. So, in Bangladesh, they go bowling together. In Cambodia, they ride a roller-coaster. He wants to appreciate how globalisation isn’t abstract, but it happens to regular (if impoverished) people. He’s not trying to ‘nail’ a corporation. He doesn’t have strong moral views. He sees himself as an innocent abroad, a ‘touron’ (tourist + moron). Readers say this social justice meets crazy road trip book is friendly, funny, easy to read and not at all preachy. Some say everyone should go on a trip like this to appreciate who made their stuff too. What Timmerman has written either naively skims over, or brilliantly introduces, complex trade (in)justice debates. Maybe this is the best way introduce new readers to these debates? Does an example of trade justice activism have to include everything? Where do you start?

Page reference: Emma Baker, Eleanor Bird, Gemma Crease, Imogen Crookes and Coralie Sucker (2012) Where Am I Wearing? followthethings.com/where-am-i-wearing.shtml (last accessed: <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 54 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Messenger Band

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Fashion

“The Messenger Band“
A protest girl band / labour rights NGO including Em [aka Saem] Vun, Leng Leakhana, Chrek Sopha, Nam Sophors, Kao Sochevika, Sothary Kun, Van Huon & others based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Band profile and selected music videos on YouTube embedded in playlist above. The Messenger Band YouTube channel here & facebook page here.

One of the most fascinating, inspiring examples of creative trade justice activism we have found. Made by garment workers, for garment (and other) workers. In 2005, a labour rights NGO based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia hold a talent concert for women working in the city’s garment factories. They want to form a girl band. Inspired by Bob Marley, it’s called ‘The Messenger Band’ because its songs and performances will carry a message to garment and other workers about their rights. They will write and perform in the style of contemporary Cambodian pop music. Sweet and beautiful songs with choreographed dance routines. But the lyrics will come from their community research with garment and other workers about their lives and struggles, and their knowledge of global trade and labour rights. They will record CDs and music videos to post online, and will perform at local concerts and during labour rights protests. Their audiences will learn the lyrics and sing along. The ‘MB’ wants to empower its audiences to claim their rights and to hold their employers to account. They sing in Khmer for Khmer-speaking audiences. They are not talking to overseas consumers, asking them to do anything to help their situation. They take advantage of the fact that women and performance are not taken seriously by the Cambodian authorities. But they are taken seriously by the working class audiences who love and learn from their music. What they do has a huge impact. Much more impact than a labour rights workshop! Labour rights organisations and NGOs outside Cambodia admire their work. They are an inspiration.

Page reference: Lily Bissell, Grace Hodges, Fran Ravel, Julia Sammut & Ellie Reynolds (2020) The Messenger Band. followthethings.com/the-messenger-band.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 62 minutes.