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MAKE THE FAMILIAR STRANGE

‘What would you say to the person who made your … ?’
A ‘pop the bubble’ icebreaker task for trade justice education
Selected poscards from our wesbite’s launch at the Eden Project in 2011 in slideshow above.

If you’re starting out some trade justice education – at any level, and with any students or public you would like to engage – it’s important to assume that they may already know and care about the issues you want to address. A simple way to find out is to a) encourage them to think about a commodity that’s important to them and then b) ask them what they would say to someone working in its supply chain if they had the opportunity. We have written about a couple of times when we have done this – when we launched followthethings.com in the Tropical Biome at the Eden Project in 2011, and when we were invited to introduce trade justice to a class of primary school students in Exeter in 2015. In both cases, this task needed a good prompt. At the Eden Project, the prompt was the Eden Project – the Tropical Biome was stocked with plants that are the sources of everyday commodities and their labelling and the design of the space made these connections. So we set up our card writing station to catch people as they walked by. In the primary school, the teacher asked the students what their favourite foods were, CEO Ian did some ‘who made my stuff?‘ research on a few, showed the class his findings, and the students were tasked to write to a corporation or supply chain worker that was mentioned with their thoughts. There’s always the option, if the writers (and their parents / guardians where appropriate) give their permission, of making this writing public, posting it online, tagging the corporations, asking for replies. The aim of this task is to gently ‘pop the bubble’ of commodity fetishism in order to encourage an appreciation of the work that has gone into making the things that people love to eat, wear and buy. This summary may be enough for you to try this for yourself. But we’ve also re-published a couple of blog posts below about our experiences of trying this out for ourselves.

Page reference: Ian Cook & Joe Lambert (2025) ‘What would you say to the person who made your … ?‘ followthethings.com/what-would-you-say-to-the-person-who-made-your.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes.

Posted on August 18, 2025September 9, 2025 by Ian Cook — Leave a comment

Who made my stuff? (⏵ Gillette Razor Blades)

followthethings.com
Follow it yourself (page) | Follow it yourself (examples) | Health & Beauty (⏵ example)

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

ENCOURAGE DETECTIVE WORK

SHOW WHAT’S POSSIBLE

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

ENCOURAGE CURIOSITY

TAKE IT TO PIECES

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

HOLD ‘EM ACCOUNTABLE

HUMANISE THINGS

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

WHITE PHOSPHORUS ARTILLERY SHELL

TELL A STORY

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

JOIN WITH OTHERS

“Who made my stuff?” | example ⏵ Gillete Razor Blades
A ‘follow it yourself’ detective work task suitable for activists, journalists, filmmakers, artists, researchers, teachers and students
CEO Ian’s ‘Traces of labour’ YouTube playlist embedded above. Can be used as a task / lesson taster. The jeans paper mentioned is Hauser (2004)

Behind the followthethings.com website lies a university undergraduate module called ‘Geographies of material culture’ taught be CEO Ian from 2000 to 2025. The first version of the module (2000-2008) encouraged students to do some online detective work to see if they could find out who had made a commodity that mattered to them. He wanted his students to appreciate if and how their everyday lives were made possible – in part – by the work done by supply chain workers elsewhere in the world. He wanted to them to find out, and think, about the responsibilities that they and others had for any trade injustices they found in the process. The results were always surprising, and Ian started to share some of their writing (with permission) with geography school teachers which led Ian and his students being invited to publish some in teacher-facing journals (see Angus et al 2001, Cook et al 2006, 2007a&b). Because this detective work always began in their personal worlds of consumption, Ian was invited to bring this ‘follow it yourself’ approach into a Geographical Association and Royal Geographical Society project called the ‘Action Plan for Geography’ (see Martin 2008, Griffiths 2009). This, in turn, helped the ‘follow the thing’ approach to gain a wider audience after it the GA and RGS wanted it to be included in the 2013 UK National Curriculum for Geography as a means to teach students about trade (see Parkinson & Cook 2013, University of Exeter 2014). Ian taught this approach to trainee geography teachers at the University of Nottingham who tried this out on their placements and wrote #followtheteachers posts for the followthethings.com blog (see Whipp 2013). It was also fleshed out in the ‘Who made my clothes?” online course that Ian co-authored and presented for the Fashion Revolution movement (Cook et al 2017-2018: see here). There’s one main principle in this ‘follow it yourself’ work: if you know how and where to look, you can find a connection between your life and the lives of others who have made anything that matters to you, anything that’s part of your life. There’s been an explosion of journalism, NGO activism, academic research and corporate social responsibility initiatives relating to trade justice since the 1990s that means that there are secondary data sources that you can find, sift and create a story about anything that comes from anywhere – or so it seems. Doing this detective work in groups can encourage diverse learners to share their expertise (e.g. by drawing on their experiences of living in different parts of the world, and being able to research in different languages: see Bowstead 2014). Doing it for younger learners can motivate them to write (e.g. by asking them what they would say to the person who picked the cocoa in their Milky Bar buttons, for example – see Lambert 2015). And doing his kind of thing as an academic researcher can help you to produce ‘follow the thing’ publications (see Taffell 2022). We have updated the advice we gave in the 2000s and set it out below as a three stage process: A – reading the results of other ‘follow it yourself’ research; B – choosing the thing you want to follow; and C – doing the ‘follow it yourself’ detective work to find out who made it for you and the trade justice issues that come with this. To illustrate what this research is like to do, what sources you can find where, and how to find and follow a productive trail, we have researched a new example from start to finish: who made Ian’s pack of Gillette razor blades? Just click ⏵ example to find out.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Who made my stuff? followthethings.com/who-made-my-stuff.shtml (last accessed <add date here>)

Estimated reading time (including example detective work): 80 minutes

Posted on July 31, 2025September 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

Following the white phosphorus trail

followthethings.com
Security

2009

UNBRANDED

SHOW MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX EVILS

CROSS CULTURES

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

“Following the white phosphorus trail”
A series of four TV news stories broadcast on Al Jazeera English.
Embedded in the YouTube playlist above.

‘Follow the things’ trade justice activism tends to connect unknowing consumers to the exploited supply chain workers who make the things they buy. But not when it comes to the arms trade. Here, the direction of travel is reversed: it’s this industry’s ultimate ‘consumers’ – the people who are killed and maimed by these commodities – that activists are worried about, especially when their use can be considered a war crime. Since Hamas’ October 7th 2023 attack on Israel and the Israeli government’s military response (described by many, and denied by Israel, as a genocide), arms trade activists around the world have set out to make public the geographies of the arms trade supplying the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and to disrupt this via non-violent direct action. They have also sought to hold arms manufacturers, shipping companies, Israeli and other goverments, and the IDF accountable for their actions under international law. But who are the people who make these weapons, where in the world? What do they know about the devastating impacts of their work? How do they feel about this? How do they rationalise it? Who’s responsible for this death and destruction? Soon after Hamas’ October 7th attack, news reports emerged that accused the IDF of using white phosphorus shells to bomb civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. These shells are designed to light up the sky, and/or to provide a smokecreen, for ground troops to more safely move into an area. That’s their permitted use. But if they’re used to bomb people, that’s a war crime. White phosphorus burns when it comes into contact with oxygen, and it keeps burning for weeks. It’s fat soluble so, if it lands on people’s skin, it burns and burns. Journalists and arms trade activists could identify where these white phosphorus shells were made from production codes they found on fragments of the shells found in burning ruins. An arsenal in the small town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, USA, was the source. And not for the first time. In 2008-9, white phosphorus shells from the Pine Bluff Arsenal had been dropped on Palestinian civilians during the IDF’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’. The Quatari news station Al Jazeera sent a reporter there and broadcast at least four news stories that followed the trail of white phosphorus munitions there from Gaza. Reporter Mike Kirsch talked to locals, showed them images of Palestinian people burned by munitions made in their town, asked them what they felt about this, asked their mayor what he felt about this. There was a detailed Amnesty International report that he could show them. Were people in this town at least partially responsible for this death and destruction? Was the Arsenal responsible? Was the US government responsible? The IDF? Hamas? Here’s what we have been able to find.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Following the white phosphorus trail. followthethings.com/following-the-white-phosphorus-trail.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 53 minutes.

Posted on December 29, 2024February 13, 2025 by Ian Cook

Blood, Sweat & Takeaways

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Grocery

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

TELL A STORY

MAKE A WEBSITE

“Blood, Sweat & Takeaways“
A four-episode reality TV series produced directed & produced by James Christie-Miller for Ricochet Films for television broadcast on BBC3.
All episodes embedded above. Also available on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.

Lauren, 21, and loves luxury food. Jess, 19, is a fussy eater. Manos, 20, loves fast food. Josh, 20, loves to cook. Stacey, 20, is an ethical shopper. Olu, 25, is a fitness fanatic. But this group of multicultural Brits who don’t seem to care where their food comes from. Until they are approached by a TV company which challenges them to travel to Indonesia and Thailand and to step into the shoes of the farm, factory and trawler workers who source and process it for export. Over four episodes – on Tuna, Prawns, Rice and Chicken – they’re filmed working alongside supply chain workers, earning and spending the same 40p an hour wages, and living in the same places. They relentlessly gut, behead and loin tuna fish in a factory. They work in waist-deep mud farming prawns and up to their ankles in water in a rice paddy field. It’s hot. All they have to eat each day is a banana and a slice of bread. This is a shock to their systems. This is car crash reality TV. They crack under the pressure, retch, cry, faint, fall out, fight, refuse to work, slow down the production line, get sick, feel guilty, insult and patronise their co-workers and escape to a comfortable hotel, eat at McDonalds and get first class medical care. Olu is sent home after a fight with Manos. He’s replaced by James, a young farmer. At least he knows where food comes from. But, as they get over the shock, episode by episode, they are humbled by the experience and become more appreciative consumers. This is the second ‘Blood, sweat and…’ series broadcast by the BBC. And it’s equally successful, attracting big audiences, winning awards and being shown around the world. Its aim is to encourage young people to think about who makes their stuff, and to find their own solutions like the cast members do. Because this is reality TV, much of the discussion focuses on the cast and how ‘spoilt’ they seem to be, how terrible they are as British ‘ambassadors’ in Thailand and Indonesia, how distastasteful it is for them to ogle at squalour, and how easy it is for them – unlike the people they’re working alongside – to leave. Critics say that its reality TV format encourages an enjoyment of the casts’ meltdowns more than their thoughtful reflections. Others quibble the facts and argue that the series’ narrative arc is a work of fiction. Others say that it places too much emphasis on consumer awareness, without provinding any ideas about what viewers should do next. And there’s nothing in this series about other responsible actors in these supply chains (for a comparison, see our page on the BBC’s ‘Mangetout’ documentary here) and nothing about the need for structural change (e.g. living wage legislation). But the BBC sets up a web forum for people to discuss these issues and one cast member ends up on a late night BBC news show challenging some glib trade arguments made by a represenative of the British Retail Consortium. So, what does this TV series do for its British cast? Its Thai and Indonesian participants? The production company? The last one is easy. The success of this second ‘Blood sweat and…’ series is followed by the making of the next series. ‘Blood, sweat & luxuries’. Then, years later, TV production executives in Holland and the Czech Republic reported that it has inspired new reality TV series. The whole series was uploaded to YouTube in full in 2022, where a whole new generation of viewers – around the world – could engage with the series, its characters and its message.

Page reference: 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 <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 102 minutes.

Posted on December 19, 2024September 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Connectivitea Of Britain And Sri Lanka

followthethings.com
Grocery

“The Connectivitea Of Britain And Sri Lanka“
A dissertation by Sarah Wrathmell, submitted as part of their BA Geography degree at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Sample pages from its findings chapters are embedded in the slideshow above. Click them to read the dissertation.

Undergraduate Geography student Sarah Wrathmell has an ambitious idea for her dissertation research. She wants to travel to Sri Lanka to find the people who grow her morning cup of tea on a plantation in Kandy, Sri Lanka. She plans to ‘follow the thing’ and to undertake some multisited ethnographic fieldwork along the supply chain of ‘Tillings’ (a pseudonym) loose breakfast tea. She ends up writing about six places: the tea garden where the tea is grown, its collection spaces, its production factory (all in Sri Lanka), its blending factory, a specialist tea shop, and a tea garden where she shares a pot of tea with a group of friends (all in the UK). She talks to pickers, packers and drivers; visits factories and talks to people tasting, processing and packaging it to exacting standards; and finally drinks that tea with those drinkers. This is embodied, sensory work that she has to – somehow – get on the page. What she wants to understand is what, and who, are the ingredients in her tea? And how are the lives of the people involved in making and drinking it interrelated? As a reader, your job is to follow her on her travels as she tries to make sense of this. Its assessors say it’s a fantastic piece of work. So, it’s submitted for a national dissertation prize. It wins this unanimously. We have a grainy .pdf copy that you can download and read. It’s important to show that not only are there high profile films, publications, and other forms of trade justice research and activism to pay attention to. Students have been doing this work too, for much smaller audiences, for years. What can this work look like?

Dissertation reference: Sarah Wrathmell (2003) The Connectivitea of Britain & Sri Lanka. BA Geography Dissertation: University of Birmingham, UK (followthethings.com/the-connectivitea-of-Britain-and-sri-lanka.shtml last accessed <insert date here>)

Page reference: Sarah Wrathmell (2024) The Connectivitea of Britain & Sri Lanka. followthethings.com/the-connectivitea-of-Britain-and-sri-lanka.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 60 minutes.

Posted on December 17, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Sim*Sweatshop

followthethings.com
Sport & Fitness

2006

UNBRANDED

SPORTS SHOES

MADE IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

REACH NEW AUDIENCES

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

“Sim*Sweatshop“
An online video game by Jonny Norridge (concept and game programming) & Gavin Courtney (back end development) for NOW Nottingham and The Arts Council UK.
Gameplay video by WahWahQueenMew embedded above. Available to play free of charge on the Sim*Sweatshop website here (Adobe Flash needed).

Designer Jonny Norridge creates a game to simulate the experience of the shoe factory work that he’s been reading about. You slide shoe panels into place with your mouse. It ‘pings’ when one’s made. Then you make the next one. The clock ticks. Your energy levels fall. Your pay is terrible. It’s not enough to buy the food that you and your family need. You are interrupted by your boss talking about targets. He doesn’t like it when you want to join a union. It’s a simple, repetitive game that you – as a factory worker – can’t win. The idea is to put gamers in the shoes of the people who make the things that they buy. For them, there’s a familiar task sequence and reward structure. But this is real. It’s kind of fun to play, but also sucks. It’s the kind of game that’s given to school students as a quick and vivid way to explain sweatshop production. If they hate it, the lesson has worked. For those who want to know more, its website suggests further reading. There are other examples of trade justice activism in which consumers go to work in the factories and farms where their things are made (see, for example, the TV series Blood, Sweat & Takeaways on our site here). With these, you’re invited to empathise with someone supposedly like you – the contestants are often pitched ‘as typical’ consumers – trying to do that work. In this game, you’re all doing it yourself. So how effectively can a game-based simulation of factory work can be? What can it convey of the poverty and working conditions of show factory workers? It turn out that the answer is ‘a lot’. Sim*Sweatshop catches on. German and Hungarian versions are created, and it becomes part of other mainstream anti-sweatshop campaigns. But are young consumers the ones responsible for these sweatshop conditions? Should company executives, investors and politicians be playing this game too?

Page reference: Declan Coakley, Jack Johnson, Josh Li, Georgie Mitchell, Jack Saxton & Tom Weake (2024) Pipe Trouble. followthethings.com/sim-sweatshop.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 25 minutes.

Posted on December 16, 2024September 6, 2025 by Ian Cook

Who made my clothes?

followthethings.com
Follow it yourself | Follow it yourself

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

ENCOURAGE DETECTIVE WORK

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

“Who made my clothes?“
A ‘follow it yourself’ detective work task originally written for learners taking Fashion Revolution’s / University of Exeter’s ‘Who made my clothes?’ free online course starting in 2017 .
Introductory video embedded above. Course outline available on the Futurelearn website here (course no longer available). Course instagram feed here and twitter feed here. Search for learners’ blog posts here.

In the summers of 2017 and 2018, we ran a free online course called ‘Who made my clothes?’ with and for the Fashion Revolution movement. 16,000 people from all over the world, many with experience working in the industry, joined us for three weeks to Be Curious (week 1), Find Out (week 2), and Do Something (week 3). We’re hoping the course will run again but, in the meantime, wanted to share some of its content: the parts where we showed how fashion’s supply chains work and the places and lives they connect (via an excellent webdoc series from NPR which is featured on our site here) and then how you can do this research yourselves, with your own clothes, to create your own personal answers to the question ‘Who made my clothes?’ You can try this for yourself, set it for your class to do, whatever you like. It starts with each person choosing an item of clothing that’s special to them, one they wear every day, one they know nothing about. The mystery helps. Follow our advice… and see what you can find, and how you can creatively express and share these findings. This task will in volve a lot of educated guesswork, but you can always get in touch with the brands to see if you’ve got it right! We’ll add some of our learners’ posts along the way so you can see what’s possible.

Page reference: Ian Cook, Verity Jones & Kellie Cox (2025) Who made my clothes? followthethings.com/who-made-my-clothes.shtml (last accessed <add date here>)

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes

Posted on December 13, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail

followthethings.com
Grocery

ENCOURAGE FEMINIST SOLIDARITIES

KNOW YOUR HISTORY

FIND SOME CHARACTERS

SPEND SOME TIME

CULTIVATE RELATIONSHIPS

MAKE IT TOGETHER

HUMANISE WORKERS

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

TELL A STORY

“Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail“
An academic book written by Deborah Barndt published by Rowman & Littlefield
2007 second edition Google Books preview embedded above. Search online to buy a copy here.

In 1994, preparing to do some undergraduate teaching, Environmental Studies professor Deborah Barndt finds a popular educational tool called A whirlwind tour of economic integration with your guide, Tomasita the tomato. She thinks this fictional tomato is the perfect etrée for her students’ understanding of cross-border trade – in this case from Mexico to Canada – and the often confusing complexities of globalisation – including messy relations between corporate power, genetically modified seeds, pesticides, stolen indigenous land, exploited peasant labour and environmental racism. What follows is a 5 year feminist participatory research project – called the Tomasita Project – which connects the lives of tomato growers, truckers, checkout workers and other supply chain workers living and working in Mexico and Canada. What she discovers and tries to convey is the clash between a ‘globalisation from above’ – the uniform, genetically-engineered, neoliberal, NAFTA-friendly tomato trade – and ‘globalisation from below’ – grass roots social justice projects working across borders and producing alternative foods. As Tomasita explained when Barndt first saw her story, the tomato is an iconic crop in the Americas. A brilliant one to follow, loading with meanings. It was native to South America, was first domesticated in Mexico, is central to the diets in Mexico, the USA and Canada, can be grown (at least seasonally) in all three countries, and was ‘one of the winners for Mexico in the NAFTA reshuffle’ (Barndt 2002a, p.82). What readers value the most is her book’s ‘feminist act’ that makes visible women workers in the global food system, and the way that it brings feminist theories into understandings of international trade. We researched this book early in its life (in 2011) and are keen to return to it to flesh out this page one day. This is an early, innovative, important and inspiring example of ‘follow the thing’ scholar-activism.

Page reference: Robert Conor Burke (2024) Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail. followthethings.com/tangled-routes-women-work-and-globalization-on-the-tomato-trail.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes.

Posted on December 11, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Maquilapolis (City Of Factories)

followthethings.com
Home & Auto | Health & Beauty

MULTIPLE OTHER BRANDS

MANY OTHER COMMODITIES

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

EDUCATE WORKERS

WORKERS TAKE THE MIC!

BRING POLITICIANS INTO VIEW

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

SHOW HOW TO WIN

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

ENCOURAGE FEMINIST SOLIDARITIES

“Maquilapolis (City Of Factories)“
A participatory documentary film in Spanish with Spanish or English subtitles directed by Vicky Funari & Sergio de la Torre, with music by Pauline Oliveros with the Nortec Collective & John Blue for the Independent Television Service & CineMamás Film.
Trailer and pay-per-view stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here. Read the film transcript in English & Spanish here.

Carmen Duràn and Lourdes Lujàn work in Tijuana, the ‘city of factories’, on the Mexico-US border. They work in factories on the hill making televisions and other COMMODITIES for brands like Panasonic and Sony. These multinationals treat this city as a garbage can that their workers have to live in. How can they fight back, claim their rights, their humanity? They take part in a participatory filmmaking project with directors Vicky Funari and Sergio de la Torre. The directors have been working with a local collective of ‘promontoras’ including Carmen and Lourdes for years. They have planned this project together for years. There’s been some filmmaking training and the promontoras take camcorders into the places where they live and work. The films they make are full of personality and a close attachment to place. They document life from these factory workers’ perspective. They document the ways in which these multinationals treat them as workers – especially when they leave – and how they treat the place where they live – as a dump for industrial waste that ruins their environment and threatens their health. They document their campaigns to clean up toxic industrial waste. In the process audiences get to know Carmen and Lourdes, to empathise with them. But the film also contains some surprising and beautiful creative scenes – often made in place of the footage that’s impossible to take inside the factory – that look like performance art. They want to show the intimate, bodily connection between the labour they perform, the commodities you buy (or are treated with in hospital) and the brands that you may be familiar with. And there’s some specially commissioned film music, made with a local music collective and featuring sounds from the factories. This is a gem of a film for anyone interested in trade justice activism. This is the film – with caveats – that these Mexican factory workers wanted to make and to show to the world. It’s one of the most intimate place-based examples featured on our site. And it was shown, deliberately, to audiences of workers either side of the US-Mexico border. Seeing empowered women like themselves struggling, resisting was an inspiration to many other women. And when the film hit the film festival circle, and there were panel screenings, the promontoras were there, answering questions alongside the directors.

Page reference: Rosie Buller, Melanie Bonner, Rebecca Lyons, Georgie Little, Tilman Schulzklinger & Jennifer Hart (2020) Maquilapolis (City Of Factories). followthethings.com/maquilapolis-city-of-factories.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 86 minutes.

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

Those With Justice: A Disney Factory In China (+ Looking For Mickey Mouse’s Conscience – A Survey Of The Working Conditions Of Disney’s Supplier Factories in China)

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Gifts & Seasonal