In April 2017, the Tate approached us with a task: host a workshop to help people put their views on paper. Entitled ‘Poster Power’ the event was part of Wolfgang Tillmans’ edition of Uniqlo Tate Lates, a monthly event that opens up London’s Tate Modern to the public in the evening.
Attended by 500 people, ‘Poster Power’ was a supersized workshop that needed to be easy to understand and take part in. Limited by strict material guidelines, which banned the use of pens and paints, we created a simple toolkit for punters to make posters. This toolkit consisted of eight personalisable backgrounds which were stamped with symbols that could be applied to a multitude of social issues, hundreds of strips of letters and, as inspiration, slideshows showing dozens of historic powerful protest placards and a set of poster mad libs.
Participants were invited to choose a background and stick down their own message of anger, conciliation, passion or playfulness. The result was hundreds of visually connected and deeply personal posters that featured slogans on a wide array of issues including: “Brexit makes me very sad”, “Queer femmes against fascism”, “Cycle your way to a green world”, “Refugees welcome” and “Be proud of yourself”.