Brixton Baskets | A campaign to promote awareness of the local Brixton Markets London College of Communication, GMD, 2017 Brief This self initiated project was a continuation of my thesis, I wanted to explore further how I could create awareness of the local Brixton markets to the new ‘gentrifiers’ to the area. Research I conducted research ethnographically, through observation in the form of photography, interviews and by experiencing what it’s like to be a market vendor and selling fruit and vegetables for a day. Through my research I found there were many different problems that new shoppers to the markets were facing; many felt intimidated to visit the stalls and they didn’t realise that the markets sold fresher and cheaper vegetables. Markets also reduced food waste as people weren’t forced to buy packs of vegetables, they could shop seasonally and could also reduce packing waste.
Development I decided I needed to create a campaign that could encapsulate all the advantages of the markets to convince people to shop there. I decided on the shopping basket as a common ground for both the markets and supermarkets. The campaign would run for a year and would be based on social media as well as seasonal zines. Local shoppers would be encouraged to take pictures of their fruit and veg baskets and upload it online using the hash tag ‘Brixton Baskets’. This would create conversations for people in the community to address packaging waste, food waste and other issues. Each zine would create awareness of local events, communities, recipes with food from the local market and interviews with locals.
Final Outcome The zines were produced for each season and Riso graph printed. These would be distributed inside the Brixton tube as well as in targeted locations that new comers to Brixton would be likely to explore in. There would also be stickers on the tube station that would promote awareness of the markets. As an additional feature to encourage shoppers to add their image to social media, local artists would be asked to create an image each month that would go to a random hash tag user. This would create an opportunity to give artists publicity as well as encourage users to use the Brixton Baskets Hashtag.