This type of demonstration has occurred throughout history, for example the Suffragettes protesting for women's voting rights. Other protests include black power and slavery, anti war, women's rights, and political protests against NHS funding, Brexit, and Donald Trump. However, protests can occur in many different formats e.g peaceful protests, strikes and even graffiti. Banksy is a great example of a graffiti artist who provokes thought, as his art is always very political and relevant to the world that we live in. His work is therefore a form of protest, as he is bringing light to a topic that he disagrees with - or that he believes should be changed.
We then looked at how other artists and illustrators respond to world events, for example the 2015 terror attacks in Paris:
Jean Julien created this simple illustration, which soon spread across social media. This demonstrates how important and effective it is to create art which is relevant to world events, and that creates impact amongst people.
In response to the topic of protests, we were set the task to create a group manifesto about a protest of our choice. Our group (Ellie T, Ella T & Ella W), decided to look at the issue of Animal Rights, and collectively created the following manifesto:
1) Animals should be respected.
2) Animals shouldn't be abused for entertainment, e.g dog fighting, circus, or hunting.
3) Animals shouldn't be overbred to the point of health defects.
4) Animals shouldn't be mass-produced for food, e.g in farming and fishing.
5) Animals shouldn't be killed just for their fur/skin/horns (ivory).
6) All animals should be viewed as equal.
7) We should acknowledge and respect the 'circle of life'. Sometimes animal's lives can be sacrificed for our benefit, however all in good proportion and reason.
8) Animals shouldn't be killed unnecessarily.
9) We should respect and protect animal's homes and habitats, e.g sustainable deforestation & afforestation.
We all individually focused on different elements of animal rights, but I personally chose to look at hunting, and created the following protest poster:
It captures the friendship and love between two animals that are often killed unnecessarily through hunting: foxes and badgers. This I hope stands as a powerful message which shows the basic need of kindness that we should share between humans and animals.
[1] Oxford Dictionaries (2017). [online]. Definition of protest in English. Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/protest [Accessed on 7th March 2017, at 17:15]
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