Activism and art

As you may well know the black lives matter movement has been active recently, with protests happening in nearly every city in the world. I live in Bristol where the black lives matter protest lead to the John Cabot statue being removed sparking other slave owner statues to be taken down across the world. Living in Bristol really inspired me to be more active in a movement. I decided to use my art to help the movement by creating posters that I plastered up over my local area which offer information and a link to petitions and other ways to help.

I created this poster and added a QR code in the space provided.

I found the experience very rewarding, especially when I saw someone reading it just after I had put it up. A child even asked me about the posters. We went to collect the posters after two weeks- to tidy up after ourselves- only to find that they had all disappeared (except the cable ties). Despite this, I think this is a valuable contribution to society and even if it only educated one person it was worth it!

On Juneteenth, I drew and painted the black power fist. This is a symbol of solidarity to the black lives matter movement and I posted it to social media encouraging others to use the day to research into the history of racism.

I also painted these posters. It plays on the rainbows that people have been putting in their windows to entertain people during this pandemic. I believe if we really want to thank the NHS then we shouldn't vote tory who continuously vote against pay rises for NHS workers and are slowly privatising parts of the NHS.