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Models (from top to bottom): Chloe Acheampong, Donghee Han, Asna Qamar, Matteo Rosso.

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I finalised my billboard display with a white background to compliment the white placards that the models are holding, leaving enough space for the charity information as the call to action.

The form of laying my images out in a collage are controversial to my original drawn image, but I feel that this layout is a lot more effective as you gain a different kind of feel and background per person and image. My original idea was to have all the models in the same location together holding the signs together at the same time, however it would've given a similar background and feeling from the studio idea discussed earlier.

I want my audience to be reassured that there are many young people going through tough things and were once in a similar position in terms of darkness. The young people part of the advertisement are there to be part of another young person's support system too.

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Billboard.
I feel that a billboard for this collage based advertisement would also attract older individuals as they walk past and actually realise that young people need to be heard just as much as they do.

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In today's workshop, we had the chance to take shots with the DSLRs at nighttime with motion and darkened shots.

We revised the meaning making process and call to action of campaign making - keeping this in mind while we were working during this session.

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Digital Poster.
We're in the world of the digital age, the youth in today's society are more likely to pay attention to anything that is attached to a screen - with the motion of something meaningful having an impact on them in an age of emotional suffering in silence within the young generation.

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Tube Station Poster.
Because most young people tend to travel around using public transport on a frequent level, it would be something beneficial for them to take in the message on the board that David is holding up to remember to check in on themselves mentally and to speak up if they're not doing okay.
Its always good to think and reflect at the end of a long day while waiting for the train.

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Following my tutorial with my tutor, I was still torn between taking my shoots in a studio setting or in an outside setting.

Why studio: A studio setting would give a more intense aura, allowing my target audience to really take in the message of speaking out loud about their thoughts as well as absorbing the stories behind the messages given. The simplicity of the white background used in the studio helped with reducing any overwhelming emotions and allow for young people to simply just reflect and be at peace with their thoughts.

Why exterior locations: The idea of using outside locations could give more character and give much emphasis on the reality of teenage grief and mental health overall as the locations would be something similar to where my audience have originated from. I picked a school setting, a local area, a park - merging these together throughout my campaigns to give a relatable and natural look/feeling.

I ended up picking the idea of exterior shots because of the naturalistic feel and displaying the intention for my audience to be able to fit in a bit more with the advertisment.

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I wanted to keep the same theme of neutrality within my images and asked each of my models (during test shots and for the final) to give a natural looking face, to emphasise on the seriousness of the topic whilst still being reassuring that there is always help out there.
The natural look of facial expressions compliment the natural choice of the placards and headings, to make it less intense for my audience to process.

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The chosen location remains the same as the one submitted in my assignment, but I felt that the space had to be used a bit more, because this initial picture doesn't seem to be as easy to establish, unlike the final one.
I felt that more colour was needed for this particular background and needed a bit more life to it.
Post this shoot, I decided to do this again and got Vanessa to stand in the centre of the canteen during the lunchtime rush, which was a lot more effective as it highlights the age of the model in the image as she is in a school setting.

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As much as I loved this image due to the contrasting shades in tone, the image is still not as clear as it should be for an advertisement.
The dark tones can suggest a sense of a dark beginning, heightening the audience experience. However, it may also be considered as something triggering for certain individuals because of the eerie and uncertain feeling that can be created from this example.

Furthermore, the face of the person isn't highlighted as much here, which contradicts the major idea of the USP. Having young people being the face of the AD gives reassurance to my target audience that there are people out there who are going through something similar and are reassured that they are not alone within their generation.

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I have always been inspired by Kruger's work due to the idea of her placard, typography and heading work.

The simplicity of a one worded heading being used within her work allows for audiences and viewers to process and be reflective upon their actions and feels.

Words can mean a lot even if there isn't many given in quantity. Everyone either has a lot to say or not much to say at all. One word or one-lined sentences can have a lot of emphasis and meaning to it all.

One word can mean so much to one person. Young people, in this case, are very impressionable and will take in the words displayed in the campaigns I will be creating as it isn't too overwhelming.

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YoungMinds' soul focus is the mental wellbeing of young people.
They hold the intention to help those who have been failed by a crisis and other system that is meant to be of service to the young and mental health in general. YoungMinds is an offspring of the mental health charity 'Mind', who serve the same purpose to prevent and help those from reaching mental health crisis point.

YoungMinds has a strategy that they use to base their promises and values on:

Programme 1: 'Never Alone' - young people to look after their own mental health.

Programme 2: 'Someone to Turn to' - young people having adults around them who can help.

Programme 3: 'Powerful Young Voices' - youth-led movement ensuring support is available to everyone who needs it.

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YoungMinds | Mental Health Charity For Children And Young People

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YoungMinds are a mental health charity for children, young people and their parents, making sure all young people can get the mental health support they need.

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PDF file of my written notes on planning.

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PDF file of my written notes on planning.

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On average, 1 in 20 young people have lost/been bereaved of a parent by the age of 16. That equates to around 112 adolescents in a year that have experienced bereavement before even reaching adulthood.

From personal experience, I feel that adolescents and grief has been overlooked upon within my age range, with older people (who may not necessarily be professionally trained) dismissing the thoughts and emotions that I have felt over time.
For such a long time it felt as if I were in darkness, as if there were no way out of it.

I want to raise awareness of teenage grief and the consequences that develop from that, in terms of how young people that experience it. People need to be aware of the mental health issues that youths may experience over time and its not a joke.

Young people need to know that it is okay to reach out for help and that there is plenty out there for them to use - this campaign will serve the purpose of promoting that help and guidance a bit more.

*Sources: https://childhoodbereavementnetwork.org.uk/about-1/what-we-do/research-evidence/key-statistics

https://www.childbereavementuk.org/death-bereavement-statistics

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Cruse is the charity that I have used in a lot more recent time, now that I'm of the older age bracket. Their emailing system has helped me to prepare and cope for certain dates in the calendar that may be sentimental or are hard to deal with considering the loss I've gone through. I usually contact Cruse and their helpline or online system when I find it hard leading up to my dad's death anniversary, Christmas etc.

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Grief can be overwhelming - you don’t have to deal with it alone. Cruse Bereavement Support is here. Call our helpline or chat online.

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The five stages of grief is a breakdown of the different stages of how one feels and progresses throughout their time of recent grieving.
The charities that helped me out previously all shared this breakdown each time I would have sessions or any questions about the overwhelm in emotions that I was going through at the time.

The billboard advertisement that I've created suits well with the five stages of grief as there are some emotions displayed through the neutrality of the models' faces. They can depict the different waves of emotions before and after speaking to YoungMinds. The use of placards is also a good break-down to allow for my audience to remember to take one step at a time when it comes to opening up - using the same concept as the five stages of grief.

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Another piece of inspiration: My own experience.

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Another piece of inspiration: My own experience.

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My dad sadly passed away when I was only 14 and the amount of changes and challenges that I had to face throughout the rest of my youth was a real eye opener for me to experience. As I was quite close to my dad, I was internally and emotionally  broken due to the attachment I had with him - it was difficult to find the light out of the tunnel.

There were different types of hardships that I went through, most of which were not the best. As a teenager trying to go through life's changes (along with the five stages of grief being another big one) there were many times that it felt as if I was stuck in so much darkness, not being able to escape the pit that I was in. I definitely feel that bottling up my emotions was a big reason behind this. I found it hard to open up and speak to the people around me about loosing my dad and the consequences that came with adolescents' bereavement.

Because of how young I was, older individuals had the tendency to dismiss my emotions if I ever wanted to talk about something that was painful because I was 'too young to know the hardship of it all'. Or this is what it felt like at least. We can definitely regard this as more of a cultural thing because mental health isn't necessarily looked at - I tried not to take this to heart but again, nobody deserves to suffer in silence.
Despite this, it did give me plenty of inspiration and motivation to keep on seeking the help I needed from people I didn't know personally and to simply just speak my mind because it genuinely made me feel a lot more lighter.

No young person experiencing grief in any way, shape or form should ever have to feel limited to how they feel or limited to be able to express the way how they feel. Every feeling and emotion is valid, no matter how young or old you are.

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Reagan displays his story with grief through the use of images, sentimental garments and positioning.

Daniel speaks about his sudden loss and the things he misses the most about his mum alongside his experience with mental health throughout teenage hood.

Reagan was in the middle of working on his project 'What Light, What Darkness' when his mother passed away. They had pieced together letters that they had written to each other (this was Daniel's way of communicating to his mum about the way he was feeling and the progression of his mental health as a teen).

Displayed in this project is a collection/photographic memoir of his recollection of what he associates with his mum + how he remembers his mum to be.

I'm inspired by his work due to the similarities we both feel in terms of mental health at a young age and post-bereavement nostalgia. Because Reagan uses real images and people within this project (and throughout his work), it can evoke audiences to sympathise and be able to relate in their own way too - highlighting Aristotle's Pathos as the technique used here.

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What Light, What Darkness

I have a void inside me; empty, hollow. A vessel that is sinking slowly, and sometimes I do not think it will resurface." (letter to mama, date unknown)

When I was younger I struggled to bring words to the surface. At the age of 12, when I began to experience mental health difficulties, I turned to writing as a way to communicate with my mother. At night I would place a sealed envelope at the bottom of the stairs for her to read. In the morning, before leaving for school, I would collect hers to devour alone on the bus. It became our way of talking without speaking and continued until I left home for university.

I never knew that my mama kept those letters. Recently she told me that she had stored them in a box and I looked through them when I visited her at my childhood home. They filled me with a great sadness, representing a time when I felt so alone with my confusing thoughts and feelings. For me, time has stood still in our family home. My emotions are stuck in my childhood: grief, melancholy, anguish. My mama sees it differently. The letters are evidence of our unique bond, a way of communicating even when words felt impossible to share. Since I left home my mother has grieved in her own way, yet transformed her home into a place of sanctuary and peace. Our family home filled with 30 years of memories means such different things to both of us.

The relationship between my mother and I has always been complex. Weighted with emotions - good, bad, in between - yet there is a bond that binds us together closely, through our life experiences of light and darkness. Returning to these letters has allowed us to revisit the past and look forward to the future, together.

My mother died unexpectedly in early 2019. Unfortunately we were unable to finish working on this project together.

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Daniel Regan - What Light, What Darkness

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I have a void inside me; empty, hollow. A vessel that is sinking slowly, and sometimes I do not think it will resurface." (letter to mama, date unknown) When I was younger I struggled to bring words to the surface.

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Grief Encounter are a charity known to be supporting children and young people (and their families) gain guidance during their time of loss and even after.

Their primary campaign: 'Go Purple' commences during November time to remember parents that have died, in support for all bereaved young people.

Why do I think this is effective: I think this is effective because of the mass support that is entailed in this campaign as it's proactive for everyone to get involved in - allowing for young people to feel comforted.

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A world where no child is left to grieve alone

We care passionately about helping bereaved children, young people and their families find hope and healing after the death of someone close.

Crises in the news

If you have been affected by the recent devastating events in the news, please read our useful guides or don't hesitate to reach out and call our helpline on 0808 802 0111 from 9am - 9pm weekdays.

This year, our theme is 'The Shape of Your Support'. We are focusing on the people around a bereaved child or young person, beyond their friends or family, that can be there to support them through their grief. At Grief Encounter, we help build compassionate communities that can provide the right support from the right people, at the right time. Find out more about how this special week supports bereaved children.

We use some necessary cookies which are essential for certain basic functionalities on our website. We would also like to set Google analytics cookies to help us improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. These cookies collect information in a way that does not directly identify anyone. For more information please see our Cookies Policy.

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Home SUPPORTING BEREAVED CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE

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One child in every UK classroom will experience the death of someone close by the time they reach 16 years old. Grief Encounter is here to help with the confusion, fear, loneliness and pain, providing a lifeline to children and young people to cope with free, immediate, one-to-one support.

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Models (left to right): Vanessa and David.

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For the portrait based posters, I came to the decision to remove the concept of the hearts (initially drawn in my first draft - seen in the PDF under initial ideas) as I felt that the concept of the placard and messages wouldn't be as consistently portrayed throughout my campaigns.
Keeping the same concept of writing out words and messages gives a more professional look with the three campaigns as a collective. In addition, the longer messages on these boards giving that short story in order for society, as a whole, to be reflective and sympathetic towards the young.
I decided upon the idea to keep one digital and one as a normal tube station poster. The digital attracts the attention of the young generation as we are in the digital world - all things on screen are most likely to be paid attention to.
The tube poster is something seen on a constant basis, for passengers to absorb such information while on their commute.

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Amy explores the loss and pain that she felt when her late grandmother had dementia and her eventual passing.

Parrish's use of individuals from her family to be part of this online exhibition has allowed me to be able to relate to her story and apply this to my own experience with grief, loss and memory. The use of her family pictures delivers some sort of attachment and sentimentality which gives me the idea to display real stories of how young individuals have dealt with their emotions using YoungMinds (incorporating Barbara Kruger's idea of typography). Thus, this has also inspired me to use the faces of young individuals - to give that basis that the campaign is for young people.

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Amy Parrish: artist, writer, photographer

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Featured on , the Angkor Photo Festival, and the Chennai Photo Biennale Learning Lab.
Check the Mail for Her Letter explores memory and loss after my grandmother succumbed to dementia. Two streams of visuals weave in and out of time and space: a collection of modern photographs in the months leading up to, and following, her passing and a series of vintage portraits dating back to her childhood. I use gouache and wax pencil to obscure elements as I consider how to visualize fragmented recollections and decaying memories. For example, even when identities were forgotten, could my grandmother still remember being loved and the tender way my grandfather caressed her arm?

The last time we met, her mind briefly slipped, insisting she had to return to the old farmhouse to check the mail. Could she have possibly known that I would be sitting here today with an unsent letter? -words that would have been my last communication before losing her completely. This letter, never mailed, unraveled a string of events that led me to wonder about the space where reality and delusion intermingle.

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Featured on NPR, the Angkor Photo Festival, and the Chennai Photo Biennale Learning Lab. Check the Mail for Her Letter explores memory and loss after my grandmother succumbed to dementia. Two streams of visuals weave in and out of time and space: a collection of modern photographs in the months leading up to, and following,...

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Further research: A Greek Photographer’s Ode to the Dying Art of Mourning (Ioanna Sakellaraki)

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Further research: A Greek Photographer’s Ode to the Dying Art of Mourning (Ioanna Sakellaraki)

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Ioanna is another photographer that explores grief, zooming in on the cultural ways of grieving from her native of Greece, comparing the ways that various other cultures and natives grieve too.

Sakellaraki's choice of including grief and culture together is something that I can relate to coming from an ethnic background. I also found it hard to fit in my emotional expression within my surroundings, especially coming from a Filipino background. In typical Filipino tradition, society has an expectation for people to mourn as heavily as possible for a set time period. Similar, to Ioanna's homeland, Mount Poikilo, there are quite extreme expressions of people grieving - quite physical and loud (many tears and many people crying together at the same time), which I found quite surreal and intense as a teen who had been brought up here in the UK.
But it is always interesting and intriguing to see the idea of a community being built up through the grief being felt over a special individual.
The theme of community being explored by Ioanna is something that I want to keep constant throughout my YoungMinds Grief Campaign.
*Reference: (Condé Nast, 2021)

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Ioanna Sakellaraki's series is an elegy both to her father and to the doyennes of a national tradition.

Save this story for later.

Save this story for later.

Ioanna Sakellaraki, a Greek photographer based in Brussels, left Athens at the age of eighteen to get an education abroad. She'd lived in seven different countries by the time she returned a decade later to attend her father's funeral. The ceremony took place on a hillside of Mount Poikilo, where one of Sakellaraki's aunts, Katina, hoped to perform a ritual lament in the style of the nation's famed moirologists, or hired mourners. Since antiquity, women in Greece have been called on to voice the collective grief of the bereaved, gathering at gravesides to wail and pull their hair. Sakellaraki's family decided against the idea; it didn't seem to suit her father, a quiet man who'd died at ease, in the shade of his favorite orange tree. But the possibility of such a performance stuck in her mind as she spent the next months in her homeland, mourning.

During the following years, Sakellaraki made several trips to the Mani Peninsula, in southern Greece, to document some of the last remaining representatives of the art of moirologia. She tracked down the mourners, some of them more than a hundred years old, by word of mouth, dawdling at guesthouses, chatting up locals, and hitchhiking to the funerals of strangers. In churches and at burial sites, she watched her subjects weep. Between services, the old women posed for portraits and told Sakellaraki stories, though several of them could barely hear her. "The Truth Is in the Soil," a series of photographs and mixed-media images inspired by her travels, is an elegy both to her father and to the doyennes of a dying tradition.

In rural Greece, family members often ready a body for burial by washing it with wine, water, or vinegar. They dress the deceased in clothing that he would have worn to church, coax the arms across the chest, tie the feet together, and strap the jaw shut. (In some ancient customs, a coin was set between the teeth, to fund the soul's passage across the River Styx.) In editing film, Sakellaraki has established similarly intricate rituals. Some of her mixed-media images transport the mourners to remote landscapes, showing only the black back sides of their garments as they gaze at mountain ranges and roiling tides. In other cases, their silhouettes appear to have decomposed, as though over time, into the very texture of their surroundings: a chain-link fence, an aging vase, a cave wall etched with chalk drawings. Sakellaraki has recast a few of the images themselves as artifacts, altering their surfaces to include cracks that suggest the delicacy and compressed depth of fossils.

Greek lore describes a liminal period between a person's funeral, when the journey to the underworld begins, and the rite of exhumation, when the soul escapes its earthly bonds. (The state of the body's remains is understood to convey the destination of the departed: clean bones signify that the deceased has reached paradise, whereas blackened ones bespeak sin.) The grieving undergo their own metamorphosis, estranged from society until they relinquish the dead. Sakellaraki's portfolio includes hand-stitched collages that embellish faded photographs from her father's days as a sailor. After his death, she printed the original images on organza fabric and, working alongside her mother, traced their outlines in embroidery. When Sakellaraki left Greece, she and her mother completed the project by shipping works in progress across Europe, continuing each other's stitches while they lived apart.

Part of Sakellaraki's aim, she told me recently, is to create space in her photography where "death can exist" apart from its formal commemoration. Though her imagery celebrates Greece-a few scenes feature pomegranate seeds or cypress branches, and the titles of individual shots evoke specific myths-Sakellaraki situates the toil of mourning somewhere placeless, everywhere and nowhere both. Her work projects a pronounced mournfulness at a time when funerary rites across the world have been disrupted, leaving the dying and the bereaved to suffer alone. Sakellaraki returned to Greece recently for the funeral of her aunt Katina, who fell at home and spent the last weeks of her life in a hospital where visitors were prohibited. For the service, a small, socially distanced affair held in a church by the side of a highway, Sakellaraki prepared a portrait of her aunt to decorate the tomb. The image depicts Katina as a black silhouette with red hands clutched over her heart, frozen in the role of both the mourned and the mourner.

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A Greek Photographer's Ode to the Dying Art of Mourning

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Ioanna Sakellaraki's series is an elegy both to her father and to the doyennes of a national tradition. Save this story for later. Save this story for later. Ioanna Sakellaraki, a Greek photographer based in Brussels, left Athens at the age of eighteen to get an education abroad.

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I watched an online video on how to use photoshop to create mockups of my campaigns.
This was the new skill I learnt from the production and editing side to things as I barely had much knowledge on using Photoshop beforehand.

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Playing around with tones, saturation and clarity.

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Playing around with tones, saturation and clarity.

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I wanted a more natural look to all of my images. As a result I kept everything the same as the natural/original and mostly increased the vibrance and saturation with most of my images, for a bit more warmth.
My colour scheme is quite a light palette to suit the target audience of 11-25 year olds as they are often associated with more colour and light. This encouraged me to work on the background/surrounding colours a lot more accordingly - with clear focus on the placard.

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I had a play around with adjusting my logo and call to action details. This digital poster was harder to think of ideas where I was going to place all the information, without it being too much. I took the same format from the Billboard display and the tube station display, merging the designs together.

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I found that this size and frame was a bit too short to fit in the 'call to action'.