Play Your Part, 2020-2022
“The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.”
SPI-B (Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group paper, 22 March 2020.
“is this Government asking you - the people, the public, to do one thing while senior members of government do something else?Have we been asking you to make sacrifices, to obey social distancing, to stay at home while some people have been flouting those rules and endangering lives? And it is because I take this matter so seriously I have had extensive face to face conversations with Dominic Cummings and I have concluded that in travelling at the moment when both he and his wife were about to be incapacitated by coronavirus. I think he followed the instincts of every father and every parent. And I do not mark him down for that.”
Boris Johnson, 24 May 2020
Since the beginning of Lockdown the paternalistic messaging of the government did not equip us with the information and resources necessary to protect ourselves from Covid; instead it worked with restrictions and punishment. Expecting non compliance, supported by the the scientists of SPI-B, who provides behavioural science advice aimed at anticipating and helping people adhere to interventions, we were inundated with emotional messaging, coupled with threats that the police had powers of enforcement. Hard hitting head lines were designed to ensure people followed the guidance. Instead of using persuasion through rational arguments based on risk and knowledge about the pandemic, they used simplistic mostly 3 word slogans such as “Stay at home”, “Protect the NHS, Save lives” and “Protect yourselves, Protect your loved ones”, telling us that the vast majority of people were “obeying the rules” however they were “concerned that people might start ignoring the advice, or cutting corners”. They were deploying fear, shame, peer pressure and scapegoating as a means of cooperation, “everybody needs to play their part and that includes you”. I saw and heard empty repetitive rhetoric containing contradicting information and ever-changing rules and slogans, which changed from a clear directive such as “Stay at Home” to “Stay Alert. Control the Virus, Save Lives.” They adopted a system similar to terrorist alerts for health communications, to give the responsibility to the individual for dealing with the threat of covid.
For this piece I overlaid the hand copied instructions from daily government briefing transcripts starting on 3rd March and ending on 19th June 2020, the day of PM Boris Johnson’s birthday celebration, which took place despite his own rules forbidding social gatherings indoors. Using chalk on a black board resonates with my time at school both as a student and later as a teacher, remembering the screech of the chalk and the air full of dust, reading information and instructions used for indoctrination in the GDR. There is a temporary nature of these marks on the black board which were always rubbed away at the end of a school day, mirroring the ever-changing messaging during the first 4 months of the pandemic in 2020.
The piece should be written on site on 3 blackboards, each 2.440 m wide and 1.22m high using white chalk.
SPI-B (Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group paper, 22 March 2020.
“is this Government asking you - the people, the public, to do one thing while senior members of government do something else?Have we been asking you to make sacrifices, to obey social distancing, to stay at home while some people have been flouting those rules and endangering lives? And it is because I take this matter so seriously I have had extensive face to face conversations with Dominic Cummings and I have concluded that in travelling at the moment when both he and his wife were about to be incapacitated by coronavirus. I think he followed the instincts of every father and every parent. And I do not mark him down for that.”
Boris Johnson, 24 May 2020
Since the beginning of Lockdown the paternalistic messaging of the government did not equip us with the information and resources necessary to protect ourselves from Covid; instead it worked with restrictions and punishment. Expecting non compliance, supported by the the scientists of SPI-B, who provides behavioural science advice aimed at anticipating and helping people adhere to interventions, we were inundated with emotional messaging, coupled with threats that the police had powers of enforcement. Hard hitting head lines were designed to ensure people followed the guidance. Instead of using persuasion through rational arguments based on risk and knowledge about the pandemic, they used simplistic mostly 3 word slogans such as “Stay at home”, “Protect the NHS, Save lives” and “Protect yourselves, Protect your loved ones”, telling us that the vast majority of people were “obeying the rules” however they were “concerned that people might start ignoring the advice, or cutting corners”. They were deploying fear, shame, peer pressure and scapegoating as a means of cooperation, “everybody needs to play their part and that includes you”. I saw and heard empty repetitive rhetoric containing contradicting information and ever-changing rules and slogans, which changed from a clear directive such as “Stay at Home” to “Stay Alert. Control the Virus, Save Lives.” They adopted a system similar to terrorist alerts for health communications, to give the responsibility to the individual for dealing with the threat of covid.
For this piece I overlaid the hand copied instructions from daily government briefing transcripts starting on 3rd March and ending on 19th June 2020, the day of PM Boris Johnson’s birthday celebration, which took place despite his own rules forbidding social gatherings indoors. Using chalk on a black board resonates with my time at school both as a student and later as a teacher, remembering the screech of the chalk and the air full of dust, reading information and instructions used for indoctrination in the GDR. There is a temporary nature of these marks on the black board which were always rubbed away at the end of a school day, mirroring the ever-changing messaging during the first 4 months of the pandemic in 2020.
The piece should be written on site on 3 blackboards, each 2.440 m wide and 1.22m high using white chalk.
