MEET THE TEAM
Hey there! I am Clara, a 3rd-year media and cultural studies student. Being a part of this project means a lot to me as I’ve been struggling with my mental health since I was a teenager. I did not realize the importance of my mental health wellness, and growing from in a conservative society further restricted me from learning about it. I believe mental health as a topic should be one that everyone can talk about freely, instead of faking to be okay. I hope the project can encourage Lancaster University students to freely express their mental health and know that they do have proper assistance on campus, so no one has to go through alone.
Clara - Project Designer
Hello, I'm Ioanna :) I am a third year Media and Cultural Studies major and Marketing minor student at Lancaster University. I am very passionate about advocacy. I believe that we should be open about our daily lives and not "sugar coat" it on social media. This is why I was drawn to the Lancaster Semicolon Project. Through this movement, I want us to show how everyone goes through ups and downs with their mental health and help break the negative stigma associated with it. I want us to create a conversation about mental health and help support others going through good and rough times.
Ioanna - Publicist
Hi, I’m Angela! I’m currently a 3rd year student studying Media and Cultural Studies at Lancaster University. I have family and close friends who live with mental disorders, hence why I care immensely for better conversations about mental health in the society and to promote mental wellbeing. I believe that besides seeking professional medical help, it is also important that we as a community support each other, especially those who may be going through a tough time in their lives. The little things that we do may seem insignificant at first, but together, we can make a difference to the world that we live in!
Angela - Writer
Hi I'm Marie-Louise (ML), a third-year student doing Media and Cultural Studies from Greece. Leaving home and going to study in a foreign country was quite challenging for me, which in turn affected my mental health. This is why I am passionate about the Lancaster Semicolon Project, since it involves a topic that is relevant to everyone. We all go through mental health in our own way, but this does not mean we should go through it alone. Therefore, I believe raising awareness is crucial and should not be overlooked.
Marie-Louise - Editor
I am Matthew, a third year student doing Film, Media and Cultural studies. Recently, I have been involved in a project about mental health around the university, this brings mental health awareness to my attention and realising it has been a thing that people often overlooked. I used to be reluctant to talk about mental health, but realising it isn’t the right attitude and there’s nothing to be ashamed of talking about it. I, therefore, would like to change people's perceptions and negative stereotypes on mental health and its awareness. Thus, I took part in this project.
Matthew - Videographer
OUR SUPPORTERS
One of the major supporters throughout the project was Lancaster University’s Mental Health Society. They made Instagram stories showing and offering us support. They were very crucial in the initial project we did before this one. In that project, we wanted to investigate the effectiveness of the University’s mental health services. They helped distribute our survey and they were willing to sit for a personal interview. In the interview, we asked more personal questions regarding their experiences with the services. It was very difficult to get participants because people were not willing to be so open about struggling with mental health issues. With the results that we collected from our survey; we were able to make informative flyers on what other students did when they were struggling with their mental health. This helped other students recognize the most popular techniques and offer insight on what they can do if they are in need.
We also reached out to the University. We wanted to get some quotes from them about their services and how they support the students. They didn’t respond to our first email (which we sent while we were doing our initial project in November), so we decided to write another and hope they would reply (this was February 12, 2020). They didn’t respond within a week, so we decided to call them on February 18, 2020. They told us to re-email them and they would respond to any questions we may have. This was weeks ago, and we still haven't gotten a response. We emailed them again on March 12, 2020 and still haven't received a response.
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When we conducted our real-world action, we got a lot of support from fellow students. They were all keen to answer our questions. They invited their friends and made Instagram stories telling their followers where we were. They all had kind words to say and asked their followers to look at our content. Even after the real-world action was over, our fellow students continued to show their support through sharing our stickers on their Instagram stories.
GOVERNANCE
Structure and Management
As mentioned, our activism group’s activities used social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube. We further created a website on www.wix.com in order to showcase our online content and have a place to introduce our members, manifesto and inspiration from the original Semicolon Project. In general, we created many motivational pictures through the editing website www.canva.com, which we posted to all the above platforms at a random order to ensure a variety of content. In addition, we consistently tried to post collectively (2-3 photos around the same time) so people would have more chances to see them on their social media feeds.
To start, Facebook was not only very useful for posting the above photos, but also for informing our followers about the date and location of our 'offline’ action (February 25th, 1 pm, Alexandra Square) and later thanking them for their support. Essentially, Facebook was a good base to start our general campaign. Then, Twitter was used to ensure quick and precise updates through the use of hashtags; we also retweeted other important posts and/or pages that were relevant to the Semicolon Project, such as content speaking about suicide prevention. Consequently, this can increase the popularity of our movement and put it under the spotlight. Moving forward, Instagram facilitated further collective posting, in order to achieve better visibility from other accounts. Instagram stories also helped to gather people for the Alexandra Square real-life action – participants of the action mentioned us in their own stories too, which helped ‘share the word’. As for further promotion, we encouraged students to post stories of them ‘using’ the semicolon stickers we gave out, e.g. decorating their laptop with them. The LU Mental Health society also mentioned us in their story, prompting their own followers to join our project. Then, YouTube was used to promote the two videos were created to 1) introduce the Semicolon Project, 2) document the offline action. Finally, we used our website as a general foundation to regularly update our content, showcase our roles and our social media handles.
In general, we did not focus on conducting an online petition, rather, we initiated our offline action in the form of ‘on-the-spot' interviews. After receiving 85 responses on a survey we made regarding students’ views on the university’s mental health services, our next mission was to get random students’ own views on the topic and ask them to guess what kind of statistics we found (see real-life action video for questions asked). Furthermore, we printed out flyers including statistics and infographics that described the survey’s results, as well as stickers with our logo to spread awareness creatively. At the end of our questions, we made sure that students knew where they could get help from in the university by informing them of mental health services available on campus. Then, as mentioned, we urged them to take photos with their stickers to ‘spread the word’. Their responses were later posted in video form to promote our real-life action.
Ultimately, in an attempt to reach some ‘local allies’, we initially contacted the university’s counselling services via email to ask them to answer some questions. As aforementioned, although they did end up answering to us via call, they still did not provide us with the information we needed. Plus, we contacted the LU Mental health society who we had been in contact with before, for another project. They were very happy for our real-life action and continually informed of their support, especially through their social media.
Our objectives and Activities
We are aware that a considerable number of students (which is 93%, according to a survey we carried out in the previous project) within the university are suffering from mental health issues. Given that the University is providing support to individuals who need help in a couple of ways. Therefore, we wanted to promote the most common and accessible platforms that students could use when they are struggling and searching for professional help.
We post content constantly on our social media accounts (e.g. Facebook, Twitter), posts include mental health-related quotes and photos, tips for improving one's mental health. For our Twitter, we have put hashtag that connects us to other accounts that have similar aims, which increases the online exposure for our social movement.
Furthermore, we organized a meet up in Alexandra Square on campus to meet with our supporters. We designed a small quiz, mainly about the common mental health issues around campus, for the participants. We also designed flyers and stickers for the participants, which has contacts for mental support from the University. We filmed our real-life action and edited it into a video to post on our YouTube. We also attached useful contacts for viewers of our video (members of Lancaster University in particular), which resonates with our main objective to increase the awareness on the help and support available in Lancaster University.