WMD at Glastonbury!
Engaging a younger audience.
The Glastonbury Festival is renowned for some "off piste" goings on but this year saw something new on the giant screens - a series of short videos from the WMD Awareness Programme sending up the renewal of Britain's ageing Trident nuclear deterrent.
Some time ago, Cultural Dynamics was approached by the WMD Awareness Programme to help them work out how to attract "new blood" to support for their aims - ultimately, the abolition of weapons of mass destruction world-wide. Research had shown that, with a whole generation brought up since the Cold War ended, hardly anyone seemed to care about WMD anymore. This story is best told by Professor John Finney of UCL, and Carol Naughton of C3i.
(Described to Cultural Dynamics' Pat Dade):
JOHN: "As you probably gathered 'in the early days', I was sceptical about a fair amount [of Values stuff] but, being a 'good' scientist we trialled the ideas and they worked. So, no more scepticism! I was particularly impressed with two of the constructor [focus] groups that John Scott ran for us. I didn't sit in on the groups, but from just meeting the people as they turned up - to make sure they could find the way to the room - it was absolutely clear that the members of the two different [Values] groups we chose fitted the bill your work suggested. After that, and the content of the group discussions, Carol and I were both convinced!"
"Carol followed everything we found in the research and the focus group recommendations that stemmed from the research and they took the message to a whole new audience. They realized the vision they had of getting their message to the audience at a major music festival, when they got these [videos] shown at Glastonbury on the Saturday night - prime time!!! They were also shown repeatedly afterwards! And up on their website for viewing at any time."
CAROL: "I mentioned to you how we were so grateful for all the advice you have given us over the years and how we have been trying to follow it as much as resources allow."
The three short films we commissioned launched on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury and were played repeatedly to hundreds of thousands over the festival weekend! They are here - I hope you like them."
You can find out more at dont-buy-it.org.
