Ensuring anti-violence campaign practices reach beyond university settings.
The setting
Academic research has often been critiqued for not widely sharing, or promoting, its findings and implications for policy-making and practices beyond university settings. To my mind, there is no point in conducting research that doesn’t have some practical implementation as part of its process. Love Fighting Hate Violence (LFHV) is an anti-violence campaign that I’ve built with my research partner; Dr. Alex Channon that specifically seeks to address this issue.
The task
We wanted to draw on our academic work together, from our research into sports violence, to produce a campaign that would effectively communicate the key messages to non-academic audiences. Simply put; that one can love the fighting involved in martial arts while promoting anti-violence behaviours. By working with a brand strategist and graphic designer, visually appealing and easy to digest communications were developed to promote our cause and break down some of the traditional barriers between academic research and the wider community. A manifesto booklet and coaching toolkit were two key documents produced aimed at helping coaches and athletes to see how they can bring about social change within their communities.
The Result
Since launching the campaign, we’ve presented our coaching toolkit to governing bodies and run practical workshops, as well as help coaches understand how to integrate anti-violence agendas into their sessions across multiple age groups. This led to LFHV’s campaign message being picked up by athletes and promoters of combat sports events in order to articulate and share the very important differences between fighting and violence. LFHV’s success has largely been down to the rigorous nature of our research being communicated in an accessible way for the audience, which involved a balance between considered language, design aesthetic and practical implementation.