Come on, have a laugh! It was only a joke! Can't say anything anymore…
How many times have we thought or said it out loud? How many times have we heard this? Paying attention to words is a complex, daily exercise that requires the effort to put yourself in the shoes of the person to whom that "joke" is addressed. Reflecting on the sentences we pronounce, their explicit or implicit meanings that they acquire, is therefore an indispensable practice, the first step in building an inclusive and open space for study and work.
Phrases that can cause discomfort, exclude, discriminate, marginalize have been collected from the direct experiences of people who live university every day. In this copy campaign, for the first time in an Italian university, the aim was to visually recreate the functioning of stereotypes.
University of Trento launched in 2022 the campaign #itendshere (#finiscequi in its original Italian version) to reject any harmful statement based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, religion... Target was the whole University community but also outside it.
Posters, leaflets and bookmarks are usual communication tools because they are immediate and widespread. Yet in this campaign they are used in a different way: to unhinge prejudices. At first reading common phrases appear neutral, harmless, immediate. But if you have a closer look you’ll discover that if contextualized and specified, they reveal discrimination, exclusion, harassment. And this is what happens with unaware language. This campaign invites you to go beyond the first glance.
The graphic layout, essential and lively in the colours, supports the copy campaign by introducing the graphic element of the “X”, a symbol of the rejection of everything disrespectful that has been done so far, which University will no longer tolerate.
The impact of the campaign in its first three months of diffusion was remarkable. The leaflets hung on the bulletin boards with the contact details of the Confidential counsellor have all been used. The campaign received much comment and generated online memes and reposts on social medias.
Posters and bookmarks were requested by various local institutions, in particular by libraries and also by individual citizens. Two other Italian university (University of Brescia and Roma Tor Vergata) and some local high schools have already adopted it for free.
The campaign has been reviewed by articles in the local and national press. Given the success of interest, the University has decided to reproduce the campaign as a theme for the 2023 calendar which is given away as an institutional gadget.
The project has been fully designed, delivered and promoted by internal resources (80 hours staff work of 4 people) with a low budget (700 euros for 3000 posters, bookmarks and calendars printed internally and social adv). The overall cost of the campaign was 4.294 euros. The main items were the production of paper materials, which were printed by the University typography. From the point of view of internal resources, four people worked on the conception and production of the campaign for a total of 80 hours.
More information on UniTrento campaign #itendshere
