Whine into Water - radical journalism

Although all the JMS students were emailed by Rod to inform us about the JMS3 presentations that happened on Wednesday night I made sure that I went (even though I had an extremely long politics tutorial to complete) as one of my oldest friends is in JMS3 and therefore her group’s campaign was presented. She is in the Whine into Water group that used a radical journalism approach to try and create awareness on water quality and the Kowie River Campaign. Their campaign used the slogan “Out of Order” which was placed on numerous toilets within the Journalism department as well as in many residences on campus (including mine). Needless to say chaos and confusion ensued as people could not understand why so many bathrooms were ‘out of order’. Some people even got upset which I would think was the whole point - to achieve a reaction of outrage from the general public. That there are people in the Grahamstown area that do not even have running water is unacceptable. The posters that they used with the slogan “The ass end of the water” refers to the terrible quality of water that we have been receiving and is aimed at creating awareness. They even had a water point set up outside Pick ‘n Pay where they asked people to taste water from two different sources to see if there was a difference.
I really enjoyed their approach to the issue of water and water quality awareness as it was unavoidable and demanded a reaction. I recommend that you all go check out their site and become more aware!

JMS3 Critical Media Production

The JMS3 students have been slaving away recently in order to complete their critical media production assignments. To explain this involved all the JMS3 students being divided into groups of twelve to thirteen people making sure that each group contained at least one or two designers, radio, TV, new media and writing students. Each group was given a topical issue of our local area of Grahamstown. They then had to put together a campaign around their issue. These campaigns were showcased on Wednesday 22 October at Barratt Lecture Theatre. To say that I was impressed is the understatement of the year. Some of the presentations were amazing in their use of audio and visual to get their messages across to the audience. Unfortunately I could only stay until 21:00 and therefore only saw the first six presentations which were Whine into Water, Take a Leap, Prof Greenthumb, Ukulima G’town, Common Ground and Green Inc. The issues dealt with ranged from promoting awareness on water quality, developing food gardens to the cow dilemma. Each group decided to address their campaigns differently so for example Ukulima G’town used a developmental approach. Their target audience was students followed by the residents of Grahamstown. They highlighted the initiative of starting a food garden as a source of sustainable food. Their campaign sticks out in my mind as they showcased a 12-year-old boy named Ganief Gamat Borez who puts his heart and soul into looking after the food garden at his school. The audio visual slideshow that they produced really hit home as someone much younger than myself was taking a stand and trying to support his mother and sister as the ‘man of the house’.

It really was incredible to see the final products of the campaigns. I think for the first time I realised how even as student journalists we can really make an impact and deliver powerful messages to the public if we work together.