Confronting racism in a genuinely meaningful way requires incredible hard work. It involves confronting the countless failures in our society to tackle the problem at earlier stages: through our education system, media and in Government. As part of The University of Sheffield’s Race Equality Strategy and Action Plan, I had the job of trying to understand why people struggle so much when confronted with hard truths about racism and find new, accessible ways to explain why racism happens and how we can tackle it.
We decided that a carefully considered video and print campaign in conjunction with a series of informational lectures and workshops would create an accessible but robust introduction to a wider strategy of anti-racism across the University.
As a member of the University’s Anti-Racism Working Group, I led on this project alongside my coworker Kieran Bentley. Based on our research on how racism develops and manifests on university campuses, I wrote the script for the video alongside other race advocates within the University. I then designed, illustrated and storyboarded the video before Kieran brought the piece to life with animation.
The finished video was shown to all incoming First Year students in compulsory welcome lectures (around 16,000 students), with an additional viewership of over 19,000 across social media platforms. We received tonnes of meaningful engagement — direct feedback from students, staff and those outside of the University who watched the video and engaged in the the wider campaign, as well as comments, shares and reactions online.
The impact of the video, in combination with the rest of the programme we developed, is clear: 88.4% of students reported now understanding their role in helping to achieve the goals of the University's Race Equality Strategy. 97.3% are clear that the University does not tolerate racism, discrimination and prejudice, 85% are more confident about their understanding of racism and microaggression and 82.2% are more confident about challenging racism, discrimination and prejudice.
