Make it snappy – Page 4 – followthethings.com

“Ballet Shoes“
Undergraduate coursework written by Maya Motamedi, published in the Primary Geography journal.
Full text below.

The students’ first task in the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module at the University of Birmingham is to make a personal connection between their lives and the lives of others elsewhere in the world who made the things they buy. These are the people who help you to be you, followthethings.com CEO Ian tells them. So choose a commodity that matters to you, that’s an important part of your identity, that you couldn’t do without. Think about its component parts, its materials, and the properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming it’. And write a 500 word first person account that connects your lives. One student – Maya Motamedi – is a ballet dancer. She loves her Grishko pointe shoes. They’re part of her dancing body. After some online detective work, she’s finds who made them for her, far away in Russia. The shoes’ component parts come from plenty of other places. This kind of thinking, this kind of detective work, means you are never alone, never do anything by yourself! The lives of thousands of people are wedged into those shoes, says Maya, dancing with her.

Page reference: Maya Motamedi (2006) Ballet shoes. followthethings.com/ballet-shoes.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes.

Posted on August 21, 2024August 19, 2025 by Ian Cook

Handprint

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Fashion

2013

STELLA MCCARTNEY

ICONIC DRESS

MADE IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

WORN WORLDWIDE

CULTURE JAM

FASHION FILM

CHANGE INDUSTRY MINDS

INVOLVE A CELEBRITY

CHOOSE AN AUDIENCE

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

MAKE IT SNAPPY

“Handprint“
A short fashion film by Mary Nighy for Livia Firth’s EcoAge consultancy.
Uploaded to YouTube & embedded in full above.

The elegant, graceful actor and model Eletrra Wiedemann, wrapped in a towel after a brisk shower, walks through her beautiful apartment, designer clothes strewn everywhere. As she chooses a red dress, other people’s hands appear to help her get it on, her jewellry on, her shoes on. She doesn’t flinch until she sees the people whose hands these were in a mirror. This film isn’t about the footprint of her clothes. It’s about the handprint. These are the people who made them for her. In the room. With her. Helping her to get dressed. Every day. She couldn’t do it without them. Gulp. This film was made for an exclusive fashion industry audience to encourage them to take care of supply chain workers in the wake of the Rana Plaza factory collapse. It was later published online for a wider audience. What impacts could this vision have on them? What can we find out?

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Handprint. followthethings.com/handprint.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 43 minutes.

Posted on August 21, 2024January 28, 2025 by Mark

The Eternal Embrace

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Fashion

“The Eternal Embrace“
A photograph by Taslima Akhter.
Photo blurred due to sensitive content. Available online.

Bangladeshi photographer and activist Taslima Akhter visits the ruins of the collapsed Rana Plaza factory. On April 24th 2013, over 1,100 garment workers were crushed to death there as they made clothes for high street brands including GAP, Primark and H&M. In the rubble, she spots two dead factory workers – a woman and a man – who appear to have died in each other’s arms. Her head is tipped back and a bloody tear has fallen from his eye. She takes a photo and posts it online. There are thousands of press photos of the disaster, but this one is said by many to be the most heart-wrenching and haunting. Commentators are repelled and drawn to its horror and beauty in equal measure. What were the final moments of these garment workers’ lives like? What was their relationship? What caused them to be killed like this? What impacts can a photo like this have on people who buy clothes made in factories like this? It’s profound.

Page reference: Nancy Scotford (2013) The Eternal Embrace. followthethings.com/the-eternal-embrace.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 47 minutes.

Posted on August 19, 2024January 10, 2025 by Ian Cook

Help Me Please PMP Staff Are Evil

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Ship my order

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

ASK FOR HELP

PUT A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

MAKE IT SNAPPY

ADD TO THE MIX

MAKE IT A MYSTERY

“Help Me Please PMP Staff Are Evil“
An anonymous note found in a make-up advent calendar ordered from amazon.co.uk and reported in the Daily Mirror newspaper.
Photograph of note reproduced above.

‘A mum says her teenage daughter discovered a ‘help me’ note hidden inside an Amazon Christmas delivery. Kim Dorsett said April, 13, found the words scrawled onto an invoice inside a £30 make-up advent calendar ordered by her dad Philip. The note said: ‘Help me please, PMP staff are evil.’ PMP is the recruitment agency used by Amazon to fill jobs at its distribution sites. The discovery comes just over a week after a Sunday Mirror investigation exposed shocking working conditions inside Amazon’s huge warehouse in Tilbury, Essex’ (Source: Selby & Taylor 2017, np link).

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Help Me Please PMP Staff Are Evil (holding page). followthethings.com/help-me-please.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Posted on August 19, 2024January 10, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Letter In The Saks 5th Avenue Bag

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Fashion | My shopping bag

“The Letter In The Saks 5th Avenue Bag“
A letter written by Tohnain Emmanuel Thiong in a Chinese prison factory, found in New York in a Saks 5th Avenue shopping bag by Stephanie Wilson and posted online.
Reproduced in full above.

Stephanie Wilson buys a pair of Hunter rain boots at a high end department store – Saks Fifth Avenue – in New York City. Rummaging through the ‘free with purchase’ bag, she is shocked to find a handwritten letter in English that begins ‘HELP! HELP! HELP!’ and a tiny passport photo. It’s from a Cameroonian man who made that bag it in a Chinese prison factory. With the help of an NGO and a journalist, she finds him. This ‘message in a bottle’ definitely wasn’t a hoax (or was it?). But how was he able to write it? How many did he write? What danger was he in by doing this? All of these questions could be answered. It helped that he’d written his Yahoo email address on the back. And that he was no longer in prison, or in China, when they emailed him. Could a short letter like this have a big impact on the sourcing of these bags? What were the chances that someone would find and act on one? Its discovery, the detective work that it sparked, and the issues that it raised, went viral. Which companies want their branded goods to be made in jail by falsely imprisoned, tortured and molested inmates? It’s not just the commodities that a store sells that shoppers should be worried about. It’s the bags, the tills, the escalators… everything that contributes to the shopping experience. Workers’ rights are everywhere. Including in office furniture allegedly made in US prisons. Fact-check!

Page reference: Will Kelleher & Ian Cook (2014) The Letter In The Saks 5th Avenue Bag. followthethings.com/the-letter-in-the-saks-5th-avenue-bag.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 37 minutes.

Posted on August 17, 2024July 2, 2025 by Ian Cook

Plastic Bag

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My shopping bag | Recycle my waste

“Plastic Bag“
A short film directed by Ramin Bahrani and narrated by Werner Herzog for ITVS’s Futurescapes series.
Published on YouTube, embedded above. Search online for other streams here.

Remember those thin plastic bags that used to be available, free, at the checkout? This is the starting point for Ramin Bahrani’s short film. What lives do these bags lead after the shopping is emptied from them at home? How long do they live? Where do they end their lives? Do their lives ever end? And what if one of them could tell that story for itself (in a droll Bavarian accent)? What would it say? One may think it’s exciting to have finally been chosen, there at the checkout, to fulfil his destiny. To help a shopper carry their shopping home. The shopper-bag relationship is short-lived, but beautiful. But what if that shopper later uses you to pick up her dog’s poo? And put you in a bin? How would you feel about her then, as your life continued, further and further away from hers? You’re not the slightest bit biodegradable. Your life is going to last for ever, starting in a landfill dump. What’s it like to be there with millions of bits of other trash? Imagine being caught in the wind, blown through the countryside, travelling hundreds of miles, over maybe thousands of years, ending up in the sea, with the fish, possibly causing them all kinds of problems. Who and what might you have seen and met on your journey? What would you ponder about your life now its purpose is so far in the past? This film has a silly and unbelievable plot, but its also wonderfully moving, hilarious, thought-provoking. Viewers are surprised to find themselves empathising with an object. Caring about its fate. How its life could have been different. Maybe this is the best way to change people’s minds about the mountains of waste created by capitalism and its commodity culture. Maybe it’s the perfect film to illustrate vital materialism, assemblage theory, affect and/or dark ecology. Even if Bahrani didn’t set out to do so. Maybe you have to watch it to write an essay. Maybe it’s just too long or just plain stuuuuupid. Like a childish spinoff from a well-known movie franchise like Toy Story. Ugh. Watch and read for yourself! This page is a wild ‘follow the thing’ ride into debates about environmental justice and reponsibility.

Page reference: Molly Healy, Josephine Thompson, Daisy Aylott, Lily Andrews, Kate Ward, Charlotte Rooker, James Swain, Edward Denton & Ethan Langfield (2025) Plastic Bag. followthethings.com/plastic-bag.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 76 minutes.