Make it available – followthethings.com

“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, 2024January 8, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Nike Email Exchange (NEE)

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Sport & Fitness

2001

NIKE

PERSONALISED ‘ID’ SHOES

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

PLAY WITH BRANDING

RE-DESIGN THE COMMODITY

MAKE IT PROVOCATIVE

MAKE IT META

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

“The Nike Email Exchange (NEE)“
An email exchange between student Jonah Peretti and the Nike Corporation.
The full email exchange was posted online on shey.net. Screengrab above. Read the whole exchange here.

Student Jonah Peretti experiments with Nike’s offer to customise its shoes with words you type into its ID website. Most people would add their name or their team’s name but he wants to add the word ‘sweatshop’ to a pair of running shoes. He wants to do this so that he can ‘remember the toil and labor of the children that made my shoes’. Nike say no. Peretti replies, arguing it’s OK. They say no. He replies again, saying he hasn’t breached their ID guidelines. They say no again. They just won’t let him do it. So he forwards the conversation to friends by email. They forward it to friends, who forward it to their friends, who …. It’s posted on a website called shey.net (above) and, within six weeks, millions have read it. Next, he’s invited onto national US TV to debate sweatshops with a Nike executive. This is one of the most iconic examples of viral online trade justice activism that happens 3 years before facebook is founded. It’s also an iconic example of the activist tactic of ‘culture jamming’ – turning a brand’s values and identity against itself. Peretti didn’t consider himself (or what he did) to be ‘activist’, he was just messing around with the opportunity that Nike gave its customer to personalise their shoes. What he did became known as the ‘Nike Email Exchange’ (or NEE) and was a important part of a swarm of public criticisms of Nike’s record on labour rights – including Indonesian Nike factory worker Cicih Sukaesih’s North American speaking tour [see our page here] – that cemented its sweatshop reputation in the late 1990s and 2000s. It’s also an iconic example in trade justice activism research. Peretti gave researchers Dietlind Stolle and Michele Micheletti the email addresses of everyone to whom he sent the email string, and everyone who replied to it. They got in touch to ask them about the impacts that it had had on them as citizens and consumers. The publications that emerged from this helped establish a significant body of scholarship on what’s called ‘political consumerism’. After becoming a public figure through the NEE, Peretti continued to experiment with viral online media before setting up Buzzfeed in 2006.

Page reference: Edward Jennings, Alex Hargreaves, Matt Goddard, Amy Joslin, Millie Whittington & Charles Bell (2024) The Nike Email Exchange (NEE). followthethings.com/the-nike-email-exchange-nee.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 73 minutes.

Posted on December 16, 2024January 30, 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

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

“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 9, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Barracetamol’s Family Reunion

'Hi, I'm Barracetamol.'
'This is my old friend Benson. I never knew whayt we was talking about until I read this.'
'Me, back with my half broither talc!'
'Multivitamins and iron contain maize starch and talk just like me... I was separated from the talc in those vitamins many years ago in a talc mine'.
Barracetamil put on some neon face paint. Guess what? It contains talc.
Boozy Barry 'just chilling with my maize starch pals x.'
'I LOVE UNCLE COSTA CUP. We are made of the same materials! xxxxxxxxxxx.'
'Everyone I meet says I look a bit pasty so I decided to reunite the Talc in me with another product using talc-bronzer!'
'This royal red paint may contain talc'.
'I heard my friends in people's suitcases.'
'I stopped using toothpaste as it contains talc.'
'With my American cousins in Providence, R.I.: June 2013'.

followthethings.com
Health & Beauty | Home & Auto

“Barracetamol’s Family Reunion“
A cartoon character created, brought to life, placed, photographed and posted online by Elaine King, Nancy Scotford, Rosie Cotgreave, Katie Lewis, Jack Ledger, Alice Wakeley, Olivia Rogers, Dennis Yeung, Isabelle Baker and Hannah Willard.
Original interview with Barracetamol below. Family reunion photos available on Flickr here. Barracetamol’s twitter feed here. Download Barracetamol’s Family Reunion Action Pack here to print and place your own Barracetamol.

In 2012, students start the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ by researching different examples of trade justice activism to add to the followthethings.com website (not all of them made it). Next, students who have researched different examples come together to create their own original examples of trade justice activism. They pick up some important ideas from their own research and what has already been published here on followthethings.com. They know the importance of taking commodities to pieces by looking through their ingredients and searching each one for mining, factory, farm and other human stories from their origins. They know the importance for filmmakers and activists of finding or creating a charismatic character for their audience members to relate to and empathise with. They’re familiar with literature arguing – and examples showing – that commodities have their own agentic power, can teach us things, and can be imagined coming alive and teaching us a few things. One group of students chooses something they all carry around with them: paracetamol. They look through its list of ingredients on the box. And look them up online. They find stories about talc and its miners and magnesium stearate and its connection to palm oil workers. These ingredients aren’t even in the pills, but they do help to make them. They use news stories to follow these two ingredients to their possible origins, and then turn around and look back towards their consumption. Yes, these workers and these ingredients help to make the paracetamol they carry around with them. But they start looking at the ingredients in other products, and find that talc and/or magnesium stearate are loads of other commodities too: toothpaste, paint, bronzer, beer and more. The task of the paracetamol cartoon character that they create – Barracetamol – is to go shopping with them, to find his missing relations, and to have his photo taken with related commodities with a little caption to post on his socials. He’s trying to tap into the vibe of those tear-jerking family reunion shows on TV. A familiar genre. The group’s creative process seems silly. The students enjoy it. They find it funny a lot of the time. But there’s a serious message about commodity-following behind this. At a teardown-level, countless commodities have the same ingredients sourced from the same places, mined and made by the same people. So a simple ‘this comes from there and therefore I should or should not buy it’ narrative obscures the complex interconnectedness of things in the global economy. Not everything is made for its final consumer. Barracetamol tries to convey a more complex story in a relatable way. Group member Nancy imagines that these moving reunions have made Barracetamol a minor celebrity. So he’s profiled in a magazine. Below you can read the interview.

Page reference: Elaine King, Nancy Scotford, Rosie Cotgreave, Katie Lewis, Jack Ledger, Alice Wakeley, Olivia Rogers, Dennis Yeung, Isabelle Baker & Hannah Willard (2012) Barracetamol’s Family Reunion. followthethings.com/barracetamols-family-reunion.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 27 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

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

IMPROVE PAY & CONDITIONS

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

FLIP THE SCRIPT!

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

HUMANISE THINGS

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

PUT YOUR BODIES IN THE WAY

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

PROMPT GOOD CITIZENSHOP

BARGAIN & NEGOTIATE

“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)“
A short film directed by Karin Mak and translated by Jessie Wang for, and an NGO Report published by, Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) & Sweatshop Watch.
Watch the film in full above. Read the report – here.

Inspired by student anti-sweatshop activism in the USA, students in Hong Kong come together to protest the opening of Hong Kong’s Disneyland. They visit the factories where the Disney merch that is going to be sold there is made. They talk to the factory workers, and are horrified by what they learn. There are dangerous and exploitative labour practices behind the happy smiling image of Mickey Mouse and Friends. One group of students – who call themselves Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (or SACOM) – write a report about the working conditions in four of Disney’s hundreds of Chinese supplier factories. It’s called Looking for Mickey Mouse’s Conscience – A Survey of the Working Conditions of Disney’s Supplier Factories in China. They do this with the help of a California-based NGO called Sweatshop Watch, who send a delegation to China which includes University of California Santa Cruz film studies student Karin Mak. Mak films the factory workers talking about these working conditions, and produces an 11 minute documentary called Those With Justice: A Disney Factory In China. This focuses on one of the four factories – Hung Hing Printing & Packaging – which makes children’s books for Disney. Here, she finds, the workers are constantly reminded about the delicate fingers of Western children. They mustn’t be harmed by paper cuts. That’s why they have to use dangerous hot glue presses to stick the paper covers to hardback copies of a Mickey Mouse’s Haunted Halloween book, for example. The film and the report show images of their burned, crushed and mangled fingers. These injuries are caused by equipment and the speed at which they have to work to meet their targets. Mak’s film is used by SACOM and Sweatshop Watch (and other labour rights NGOs) to launch the report. It helps this Disney sweatshop story to get traction in the international new media. Now Disney is under pressure to respond. What follows is a fascinating to-and-fro between a huge multinational corporation and a small, determined, skilful and well-connected group of Hong Kong students. This is a fascinating and important example of successful trade justice activism. Piecing the story together below, we have found a variety of factors that have contributed to this success – some planned, some not – and a fascinating discussion about what counts as ‘success’.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2011) 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). followthethings.com/those-with-justice.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 56 minutes.

Posted on December 4, 2024January 10, 2025 by Ian Cook

‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia)

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Gifts & Seasonal

2013

2018

KMART

HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

CHANGE CITIZEN BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

FLIP THE SCRIPT!

WORKERS TAKE THE MIC!

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

CHOOSE AN AUDIENCE

HUMANISE THINGS

PUT A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

ASK FOR HELP

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

FIND THE CHARACTERS

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

TRANSLATE & SUBTITLE

FIND LOST RELATIONS

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

FIND THE LOVE

LET THE TEARS FLOW

“‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia)”
A letter written by ‘Mr Zhang’ (Sun Yi) in a Chinese prison factory and found in a box of Kmart Halloween decorations bought in Oregon, USA by Julie Keith (+ a documentary film starring Sun Yi and Julie Keith directed and produced by Leon Lee for Flying Cloud Productions).
Letter posted online by Julie Keith, reproduced in ‘Letter From Masanjia (trailer embedded above). Search online to watch the documentary here.

In 2013, shopper Julie Keith is unpacking a box of styrofoam Halloween decorations she bought from her local K-Mart. In between the ghoulish plastic gravestones, she finds a folded-up letter. It’s written in English by someone who says that they’re a prison factory worker in China who has helped to make this product. They give the address of the prison (called Masanjia) and say that its inmates work long hours and have been tortured, beaten and insulted. It asks its recipient to forward the letter to the ‘World Human Rights Organisation’. Julie thinks it’s genuine and posts o photo of the letter on her facebook with the caption ‘I found this in a box of Halloween decorations’. It gets a flurry of responses. Is it genuine? What should she do with it? There isn’t a ‘World Human Right Organisation’. The discussions spread. The post is shared many times. Soon it’s being reported on the local TV news. Next it’s a global news story. Who is this person? How did they write this note? How did they smuggle it into a box of Halloween decorations? How many letters did they write? What did they hope would happen? What danger were they in for doing this? Can journalists find the author and verify the story? And, most importantly, why are ‘made in China’ goods coming from factory labour? Isn’t that illegal? Next, this story is picked up by a documentary filmmaker who tries to answer these questions, and more. He find the author, now out of prison but still living in China. They film secretly. Sun Yi is not only the best travel guide but – helpfully – is also a cartoonist who draws the scenes of his captivity and factory labour to add unfilmable footage to the documentary. The filmmaker arranges for the Sun Yi and Julie Keith to meet in person. It’s an emotionally charged scene. She hands him the letter, they talk about their connected lives and the impact that the story about their connection has had on both of them. They are so happy to see eachother. They seem to care deeply about one another because, together, they have accidentally (her) and on purpose (him) become trade justice activists. They agree that they’re doing the right thing. But what are the consequences? He sought to expose this system of prison labour in China, but she didn’t. It’s illegal to import goods into the USA that are made with forced labour. That’s hugely problematic for the Chinese prison factory complex. So it’s hugely risky for him as the person who was instrumental in exposing this, helping to turn it into an international news story by hopefully writing a letter to an unknown consumer that asked for help. For us, this is an extraordinary example of trade justice activism because of its documentation (there’s so much!) and its impacts (so huge, unexpected and sad).

NB – this page currently focuses on the letter and will be updated to add details about the film.

Page reference: Harry Marriot, Alex Partington, William Finley, Milly Bowen, Sarah Murray & Jenny Sharp (2014) ‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia). followthethings.com/i-found-this-in-a-box-of-halloween-decorations.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 34 minutes.

Posted on November 29, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Teleshopping AK-47

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Security

2006

KALASHNIKOV

AK-47 ASSAULT RIFLE

SOURCED IN EASTERN EUROPE

USED IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

CREATE SOME CHARACTERS

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

LIE TO TELL THE TRUTH

MAKE IT FUNNY

MAKE IT SNAPPY

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

PROMPT GOOD CITIZENSHIP

“Teleshopping AK-47“
A spoof teleshopping channel promotion directed by Dougal Wilson and post-produced by MPC for Mother, commissioned by Amnesty International.
Full video embedded above. Search online for versions with other titles here.

Amnesty International is trying to get 1 million people involved in their campaign to tighten loopholes in international arms trade legislation. To demonstrate how easy it is to buy weapons like AK-47 assault rifles, how cheap they are, and how they end up being used in armed conflicts (often involving child soldiers), they commission some culture jamming. Its a short video that imagines that these weapons can be sold by cheery presenters on TV shopping channel’s chintzy pastel-coloured set, just like ice-cream makers and his ‘n’ hers dressing gowns. They’re perfect for child soldiers, the presenters say, like those in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They give one to a child to demonstrate on set, who cheerfully shoots a mannequin to pieces. Amnesty commission this darkly comedic, camp and chilling 135 second film to show in cinemas, alongside the real ads. They publish it on YouTube. Later, it’s included as an extra on the DVD of Nicholas Cage’s Hollywood arms trade blockbuster Lord of War [see our page on its Life of a bullet opening credits here]. Amnesty can’t advertise on UK TV because they’re a political organisation. And the use of pastiche / parody / humour is a novel approach in human rights campaigning in 2006. But Amnesty really go for it. On top of the cinema ad, there’s a viral email campaign, spoof arms shopping catalogues are delivered through people’s doors, and pop-up high street weapons shops open around the UK with live shooting demonstrations. Commenters are shocked by this disgusting, deeply sinister but informative campaign. One says these weapons are beautiful and every American should have one. Another pretends to agree, saying that guns don’t kill people, people do and, if guns were taken away, people could just as easily kill eachother with knives or rubber ducks. Some say humour is inappropriate for such a serious topic. Others say the ad and the catalogue is so light, so beautifully done, so plausible, that it’s perfect for generating conversations about the international arms trade and its (lack of) regulation.

Page reference: Daisy Livingston (2024) Teleshopping AK-47. followthethings.com/teleshopping-ak-47.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 30 minutes.

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

The Messenger Band

followthethings.com
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.