Pop the bubble – followthethings.com

“Xmas Unwrapped“
A short film edited by Toby Smith and Unknown Fields Division with Tim Maughan.
Embedded above in full.

This short and catchy ‘Jingle Bells’ Christmas factory film comes from a larger project that’s rethinking architecture. The job of the architect – one co-founder of the Unknown Fields Division studio has mischievously argued – should no longer to think of buildings and cities, but of the outside that’s inside them: i.e. the hidden geographies of infrastructure, logistics, commodities and landscapes. For ‘follow the thing’ geographers hardwired into Doreen Massey’s ‘global sense of place’ [see our page on Platform London’s social sculpture Homeland here], this extroverted thinking might not seem particularly novel. But, it’s fascinating to see what can happen when new forms of architectural theory and practice are directed towards thing-following. There’s so much to learn from. First, there’s the thoroughly collaborative and inderdisciplinary studio practice of Unknown Fields Division. Second, there’s a long-running postgraduate course at the Architectural Association in London where its co-founder has taken students on infrastructural ‘expeditions’ for many years. Third, there are the writers, filmmakers, data-visualisers and programmers who have accompanied these expeditions and produced the highly-professional and publically eye-catching work. Xmas Unwrapped is an excellent example of this. For years, we’ve been embedding it on the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module website with instructions for coursework to be completed over the Christmas holidays. It’s made from observational footage of people in a dingy factory in China making Christmas decorations and Santa hats – by hand – plus other people boxing, loading and shipping loading them into a container for shipping overseas. Watch it with the sound down and it’s not that dramatic. None of the workers speak to camera. They just work. Repetitive tasks. Making familiar decorations and hats to those who celebrate Christmas. The footage does not aim – it seems – to evoke any emotion in its audience. But turn up the volume and it’s accompanied by a choir of children singing ‘Jingle Bells’ in Mandarin. That’s what seems to jar. ‘Oh what fun it is to ride on a one horse open sleigh’. What?! As one commenter put it, ‘the chinese version of jingle bells made me laugh. ding dong dang ding dong dang. im never gunna sing it in english again now’. Another wrote, ‘I kinda wanna barf’. This film (and the other outputs from the project) is a gentle form of trade justice activism. It’s trying to ‘pop the bubble’ of Western consumption by ‘join the dots’ to Chinese factory production via the infrastructure of international trade. It does not explicitly address trade injustice, exploitation, labour rights or anyone’s activism. Factory and logistics workers don’t have a voice in their representation. The project members aren’t making this work because they want its audiences to do anything. Just think. Realise that their things are made by people elsewhere in the world. The world they live in is made by others, elsewhere. Xmas Unwrapped can be used as a brief and gently provocative spark to discussions of trade (in)justice, though, not only in the classroom [like Handprint] but also – especially – around the Christmas dinner table. That’s where some impact can take place. Plus, it’s not a standalone piece of work. What about the students and collaborators who went on that expedition? What did this Christmas factory filming leave them thinking about, and doing? Who watched or read their work?

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Xmas Unwrapped. followthethings.com/xmas-unwrapped.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 39 minutes.

Posted on September 2, 2025September 2, 2025 by Ian Cook

‘What would you say to the person who made your … ?’

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Back to school

ENCOURAGE THANKFULNESS

MAKE IT SNAPPY

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

‘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

MAKE THE FAMILIAR STRANGE

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

ENCOURAGE CURIOSITY

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

TAKE IT TO PIECES

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

HOLD ‘EM ACCOUNTABLE

HUMANISE THINGS

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

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

WHITE PHOSPHORUS ARTILLERY SHELL

SHOW MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX EVILS

CROSS CULTURES

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

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 July 10, 2025July 14, 2025 by Ian Cook

Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork

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Grocery

2009

JAFFA

ORANGES

GROWN IN PALESTINE / ISRAEL

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

SHOW WHAT’S POSSIBLE

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

MAKE THE FAMILIAR STRANGE

BRING ACADEMICS INTO VIEW

TELL A STORY

MAKE IT INDEPENDENT

STAGE A Q&A

“Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork“
A documentary film dirercted by Eyal Sivan for Trabelsi Productions.
Trailer embedded above, search online for streaming options here.

Imagine visiting your local supermarket and popping a bag of Jaffa branded oranges in your basket. Then imagine browsing your favourite news site on your phone in the checkout queue and reading the latest story about deaths in Gaza, war in the Middle East. Maybe you’ve read a lot about this conflict, or have some first hand experience. But news stories don’t tend to explain its background, how and why it began. That bag of oranges – and this documentary film – can help to do this. Jaffa is an ancient Palestinian city. It’s also where Jaffa-branded oranges have been grown by Arab and Jewish people since the 1800s. Once picked, they would wrap each individual fruit in tissue paper, pack them into wooden boxes, load them onto boats and ship them wordwide. A year after the birth of ‘practical photography’ in 1839, Palestinian photographer Khalil Khaed visited Jaffa to document everyday life and work, including in its orange groves. Photographers, filmmakers, artists and advertisiers have documented the connection between Jaffa and oranges ever since. But, as the Israeli state began to take shape in the 20th Century, this film argues that there was a concerted attempt to remove Palestine from Jaffa oranges and to rebrand them as emblems of Israeli civilisation. It’s settler Colonialism 101. To piece this history together, Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan spent five years sifting through numerous archives for Jaffa-orange photos, films, advertising and resistance. He showed what he found to Israeli and Palestinian people- academics, poets, retired orange workers, advertising executives, others – and filmed their reactions. What he created from this footage is – many have said – a profoundly insightful and moving documentary. It has generated considerable critical and public acclaim from audiences around the world. First screened in 2009, it is still a go-to documentary to spark debate about the Palestine-Israel conflict today. And Sivan continues to attend screenings to answer questions about the film and the futures that might be possible in the region. Sivan’s politics, and films, are anti-Zionist. He has struggled to raise funding and to gain screening opportunities in Israel. He and his films have generated criticisms of anti-semitism. But the main argument in ‘Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork’ is that, if Arab and Jewish people were able to work together harmoniously in the past – like they did in Jaffa’s orange groves – they can do so in the future. You have to see this to believe this. Why not watch the film? Read the comments below. See what you think. We’ve tried to captire all of the discusion we’ve found online.

Page reference: Lucian Harford (2025) Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork. followthethings.com/jaffa-the-oranges-clockwork.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 67 minutes.

Posted on June 28, 2025July 2, 2025 by Ian Cook

Barbie’s Dirty Secrets

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Gifts & Seasonal

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

IMPROVE PAY & CONDITIONS

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

HOLD ‘EM ACCOUNTABLE

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

START WITH A PARADOX

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

BLAME, SHAME AND GUILT

JOIN WITH OTHERS?

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

“Barbie’s Dirty Secrets“
A documentary film presented by Isobel Yeung, and produced by Alasdair Glennie for Zandland, first broadcast on Channel 4, UK.
Available on YouTube, embedded above.

Journalist Isobel Yeung latches onto worldwide success of the 2023 Barbie movie and its feminist critique of the toy industry to ask about the lives of the women who make these dolls in factories in China. She drives around Los Angeles in a Barbie pink Jeep, picking up expert passengers who know about Mattel – the LA-headquartered company that makes and markets this doll – and about the wealth enjoyed by its CEO Ynon Kreiz. These scenes are intercut with Yeung’s phone calls to a fixer in China who is tasked to get an undercover reporter into a Barbie factory wearing a hidden camera. This reporter lasts just one day handling scolding hot plastic Barbie limbs with her bare hands, and is withdrawn for her own health and wellbeing. A second undercover reporter then gets a job assembling plastic figures from a forthcoming Disney Moana movie. He seems to last a day or two, unable to meet rising quotas for new employees, but he captures conversations with his co-workers about life and work in the factory. This undercover footage is shown to a representative of a labour rights NGO who is horrified by the violations that she sees. The film then shifts its attention to another Mattel brand – Fisher Price – and a dangerous cot which has been linked to the deaths of babies, and legal cases against the company. [We don’t detail this below, because we are interested in the way that this film connect the labour, marketing and consumption of Barbie dolls]. Our website has documented many landmark examples of trade justice activism when it was new – from the late 1990s in particular – and when it could have shock value and noticeable impact. Audiences in the 2020s, however, seem no longer to be shocked to find labour exploitation at the end of a supply chain. Corporations are better set up to handle the damage that such revelations may or may not do to their reputations and sales. And ‘trade justice activism’ like this is now pitched by production companies to broadcasters as a form of ‘buzzy’ media content. But, for us, there are glimmers of a more complex theory of change at work here. Less than a week after Barbie’s dirty secrets was broadcast, a China Labor Watch report was published that detailed exploitative and dangerous factory conditions in Barbie factories in China. Isobel Yeung refers to such a report in the film. The role that Barbie’s dirty secrets therefore had, we speculate, was to work alongside this NGO research, to make the report’s findings public, and to connect accusations of Mattel’s feminist corporate hypocrisy through the same media as the Barbie movie: film. Should anyone studying trade justice activism expect to final any single example having an impact in and of itself? No. And is possible to follow just one thing? It doesn’t look like it here. Check the comments below.

Page reference: Lucian Harford (2025) Barbie’s Dirty Secrets. followthethings.com/barbies-dirty-secrets.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 44 minutes.

Posted on March 20, 2025April 3, 2025 by Ian Cook

Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

followthethings.com
Grocery | Gifts & Seasonal

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

SHOW WHAT’S POSSIBLE

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

INVOLVE A CELEBRITY

TARGET THE RIGHT BRANDS

BRING A MANAGER INTO VIEW

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

ENCOURAGE A BUYCOTT

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

“Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)“
A monologue by John Oliver on his Last Week Tonight show broadcast in the USA on HBO.
Full monologue posten on YouTube embedded above.

Satirist John Oliver is delivering his weekly monologue on late night American TV. It’s the day before halloween, where millions of chocolate sweets will be given to children knocking on doors in scary costumes [see our ‘Gifts & seasonal’ department for other Halloween examples]. But what’s scarier is the fact that the cocoa in that chocolate was probably picked by children in the Ivory Coast and Ghana in West Africa. Despite longstanding critiques of child labour in chocolate’s supply chains; despite legislation being passed to remove it; despite the major brands’ own schemes to eliminate it, child labour – and the modern slavery that often supplies it – persists in an industry that continues to make multi-$£billion profits. Oliver’s monologue is about consumers’ love of chocolate and the corporate evils that feed it. He combines acerbic takes on the chocolate corporations’ social responsibility rhetoric and advertising practices (including the distractions of a ‘f*@kable’ green M&M) with footage of filmmakers meeting children who pick cocoa, their families and communities. One clip of a Dutch journalist’s ‘gotcha’ moment with a Nestlé executive is particularly powerful. Admitting that coca farming communities suffered poverty and that’s why children had to work, the man from Nestlé abruptly ends the call when asked why he doesn’t just pay them more. That journalist went on to start his own ‘slave free’ chocolate company – Tony’s Chocolonely – which Oliver holds up as an exemplar. The chocolate business can work differently, because it is working differently. What’s needed to help this along – Oliver says – is regulatory change. With each episode of his show published on YouTube; with his use of humour to make depressing topics palatable to viewers; and with his championing of Tony’s – this was a provocative show. Commenters shared how much they loved Tony’s Chocolonely too, or that they were going to try some as a result of watching the show. Others criticised the writers for parroting Tony’s marketing materials, and pointed out that its journalist founder had left because Tony’s couldn’t make slave-free chocolate. Others said that other, more ethical, chocolate brands were available if you knew where to look. But, people chipped in, shopping differently isn’t the only way to tackle trade injustice. Trade justice can be achieved only via multiple forms of pressure, from multiple angles, constantly. And Oliver’s monologue didn’t help. Chocolate researchers criticised it for being full of the usual stereotypes. Cocoa farmers have never eaten chocolate? Nope. They may just pretend not to have eaten it for gullible Western filmmakers. And the writers bypassed – like most coverage does – those in producer countries who are trying to make a positive difference. For Oliver, it’s the Western brands and consumers who can save the day by acting more ethically. Yes, that’s very important. But it’s not enough. Can there be ethical consumption under capitalism? That’s the bigger question. It’s what everyone’s talking about here.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO). followthethings.com/chocolate-last-week-tonight-with-john-oliver-hbo.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 78 minutes.

Posted on January 29, 2025January 30, 2025 by Ian Cook

How to run a subvertisement workshop

followthethings.com
Back to school

ADVERTISED IN FINLAND

ART WORK

CULTURE JAM

POP THE BUBBLE

ENCOURAGE DETECTIVE WORK

TARGET THE RIGHT BRANDS

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

START WITH A PARADOX

TAKE IT TO PIECES

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“How To Run A Subvertisement Workshop“
A subvertisement workshop designed by Eeva Kemppainen for Eettisen kaupan puolesta ry (Pro Ethical Trade Finland).
Workshop video embedded above. ‘How to’ booklets available to download in Finnish here and English here. Eeva’s project blog is here. An archive of subvertisements produced by students can be found on Flick here. This page was originally published on the followthethings.com blog here.

Eeva Kemppainen took the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module that’s behind our site as an Erasmus student, did her Masters research at the University of Helsinki on the pedagogy she had experienced in the module and went on to work for the pro-Fair Trade NGO Eettisen kaupan puolesta (a.k.a. Eetti) in Helsinki. In 2014, she published a paper in the Finnish journal Natura (here) about ways in which her work for Eetti tried to engage students in humorous critiques of consumption and advertising through a pedagogy of culture jamming. In 2016 Eetti published Eeva’s booklet Medialukutaitoa vastamainoksista (also published in English as Teaching media literacy and the geographies of consumption) which set out how to run culture jamming workshops – like the one in the video above – and showcased the kinds of work that students produced. The booklet drew inspiration from a number of examples of trade justice culture jamming from the followthethings.com website. What can students examine, then cut up, rearrange and/or scribble on magazine adverts? They try to subvert advertising’s messages so that the information that is hidden – including the lives of the people who make what’s being advertised – is made visible. What they produce are called ‘subvertisments’. In this post, Eeva describes how she organises these workshops, and showcases some of the work that students can produce.

Page reference: Eeva Kemppainen (2015) How To Run A Subvertisemeht Workshop. followthethings.com/how-t-run-a-subvertisement-workshop.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes.

Posted on January 29, 2025January 30, 2025 by Ian Cook

Fashion Transparency Trump Card Game

followthethings.com
Back to school

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

ENCOURAGE DETECTIVE WORK

MAKE IT FAMILIAR

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

TARGET THE RIGHT BRANDS

“Fashion Transparency Trump Card Game“
A card game developed by Ian Cook et al for originally for the Fashion Revolution (2014) and Fashion Revolution Brazil (2020)
Fashion Revolution Brazil’s instagram game video & YouTube Programa Educacional Jovens Revolucionários video embedded above. Resources available below. This page is an edited and updated version of posts originally published on the followthethings.com blog here.

When trade justice organisations produce numerical data about corporations’ ethical, sustainability or transparency there’s an opportunity to make this data accessible to students in the form of a Trump Card game that they can make and play with their own possessions. The initial idea for this game came from students taking the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module that’s behind the followthethings.com website (see our demo cards here and some cards made and played by students at Bath Spa University here). What’s presented below are a set of blank cards and an ongoing, updated set of data that your students could work with now. This game is an excellent ice-breaking activity to engage students in discussions of the pay and conditions of the people who make their clothes. It’s also a good way to encourage discussion of the terms that are being played with (what’s good ‘governance’ for example?) and to appreciate how corporations can and do make different amounts of effort to create a more ethical and sustainable economy (with limits). This game can be made and played by any group of people trying to learn the basics and/or intricacies of Ethical Trade and Corporate Social Responsibility.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Fashion Transparency Trump Card Game. followthethings.com/fashion-transparency-trump-card-game.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes.

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

Blood, Sweat & Takeaways

followthethings.com
Grocery

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

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.

👻 Who's haunting Halloween?

🎅 Who's been good this year?

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👻 Who's haunting Halloween?

🎅 Who's been good this year?