HIA Poland Fellowship 2015

So... what's next?
by Magdalena Miśkowicz

Isn't it the question that some of us had raised almost from the beginning of our program? After an intense time of learning, discussing and reflecting, right now it's time for the next step in our Humanity in Action adventure. It's time to give a more material form to our ideas. It's time for action!

For almost two weeks, we've been focused on challenging moments in Polish history, such as the Holocaust and the transformation. We've been discovering the presence of the past in the streets of Warsaw and discussing the factors that were shaping Polish identity. We've been exploring how the past affects the presence and what lessons can we learn for the future. That journey through history led us to the contemporary Poland and the position of different minority groups in Polish society.  

The second part of HIA Warsaw Program is dedicated to creation and implementation of social media campaigns. To deal with that task, we've created 8 multinational teams. Each of them will create a social campaign focused on one of the group that suffers discrimination and is the target of hate speech nowadays in Poland, such as: Roma, Jews, LGBTQ, Refugees/Migrants, Muslims, People of Color or Women. From now on, we will be trying to apply in practice what we've learned so far.

The question we've been confronted with from the beginning of the output phase was: How to make an effective social campaign? Transferring ideas from our heads into catchy memes, graphics and short videos in a very limited time definitely is a challenging task. HIA Team Poland took care of our preparation and provided us with several workshops with professionals and activists who deal with advertising and social activism on a daily basis.

But... can a social campaign become viral? By presenting some good practices and examples, Marek Dorobisz, strategic copywriter and creative director, proved that it can. I was probably as much shocked as interested by Marek's commercial point of view. As Marek explained, if we want to be successful in advertisement, we should follow so called „3P” rule, a shortcut made from Polish words: „prosto, pomysłowo i precyzyjnie”, what means „simply, creatively and precisely”. As he emphasized, preparing a good creative brief, a document which clearly defines the message, audience and goal is crucial before creating a campaign.

According to Faith Bosworth, an activist from Peng! Collective from Berlin there are some effective tactics, such as spectacle, provocation, topical response and use of humor/ridicule (e.g. creating funny memes) that may help us reaching our goal. During the training with Faith we were faced with the question about how to find a middle way between the problem and the ideal solution, and how to think about a campaign in a realistic way. What I found really useful was a brainstorming on how to apply advertisement tactics to counteract hate speech in the Internet.

Successful campaign also plays with emotions. Curiosity, happiness or anger are the key elements which can help us reaching the attention of our audience, as Alexey Sidorenko, a Russian activist and social media expert stressed out. What's more, the effectiveness and the outreach of a social media campaigns can be measured and the analysis of the trends can helps us to improve it.

The lesson I hope to remember from the output phase training is that the capacity to think out of the box is the essential skill. Making our audience stop and reflect on our work is already a step closer to the issue we try to deal with. Secondly, as various speakers stressed, we can only really engage in the issue we care about. Therefore, the question: “What bothers me?” is the basic one on the way of the activist to be. Third, we should keep questioning ourselves and not sticking to the first idea we have.

Seems challenging? It is! But that's exactly what HIA is about: people and action. The second not less important part of the challenge is teamwork. We've been learning not only how to apply in practice our knowledge and skills, but we are continuously learning to listen to each other, discuss our ideas and work together for the common aim, despite all the personal and cultural differences between us. 

One sentence that served as an inspiration for me during this intense time was one expressed by Eugeniusz Smolar during the HIA Poland conference „Poland on the Move”. It's a quote of Samuel Beckett: „Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” It's time for action. Let's try without fear. We can always fail better.