Friday 15 June 2007

Inky Paws

Tomorrow is the Student Pride event in Manchester. I've been busy making inky things ready for it.

First, some flyers in a somewhat Kaffequeeria / zinester alternative scene style, advertising both BiFest Manchester, BiFest Sheffield, and BiCon. They are essentially a re-make of the 2004 BiCon "Choose Both" cards on the other side. This may be controversial, as at an NUS LGBT event a few years ago the design got heckled strongly by one participant because of the line "choose to steal lesbian energy and give it to men". This was declared to be horribly offensive (whereas all the other stereotypes and weird crap spoken about bisexuals included in the artwork was fine, then?) and meant that people would be put off going to the event. Perhaps for the complainant this was true, but nonetheless it proved to be the best attended BiCon outstripping even the 2000 International BiCon, and unlike any other bi event propaganda, she remembered it two years later. Which, in marketing terms, is I think a fair definition of success.

Eager print-monkey work also means tomorrow I get to unveil the first batch of the Lobby Stonewall To Be More Bi-Inclusive "tackling ........ invisibility" postcards.

Yes, rather than just bitch about it in this blog and in the pages of BCN and the Delga newsletter, the time has come to Do Something. So a clever (if I say so myself) postcard design has been quickly knocked up, and with the added twist that lobbying by postcard is exactly how Stonewall tell us lobbying for change is best done. It mayn't achieve anything, or then again it might just get a goodly few postcards mailed in and give Britain's biggest LGb lobbying and equality organisation a bit of a shot across the bows.

Here goes...