First Event with PETA – Try to relate to who’s on your plate

Week ??/ Event One

I can’t remember what I did from week to week at PETA UK now, so I’ll have to carry on my memoirs by remembering particular times – in this case my first event.

I started interning at PETA in mid October and World Vegan Month (November), kicking off with World Vegan Day (the 1st) was fast approaching. Plans were already in place to mark the day and month with a demonstration called “Try to relate to who’s on your plate” or, the ‘plate demo’. This event comprised of a very real-looking but larger-than-life plate of the familiar stake, chips and peas – with ketchup – but instead of steak, there was to be a model. The model was the gorgeous and lovely TV personality Sarah-Jane Honeywell. All there was left to do was to locate and collect gigantic-sized plate, food and cutlery.

Now, sometimes you can have a great idea but it turns out the practicality of it is a lot harder than you first imagined. Events at PETA tended to go this way. Great ideas but, how the hell to pull them off? I must have spent hours, mounting up to days, staring at a computer screen, manically searching through Google results for the strangest things. In this case cutlery, plate, chips and peas all of gigantic size. After trawling through and ringing round every model makers and prop shop in the Greater London area, only the cutlery was to be found. Cue me, the campaigns coordinator Abi and office manager Elisa, all mucking in to hand make the chips, peas and plate.

The peas in the end were extra large polystyrene balls found at a model makers spray painted green. The chips blocks of wood painted yellow. The plate was made from flat sheets of polystyrene, sandwiched together with a rim stuck on around the outside. Et voilà! a scrummy looking plate of wood and plastic. The only thing that was real, apart from Sarah-Jane, was the ketchup! And as it turned out, quite a bad idea as it seeped into the polystyrene plate and after being in the sun for a bit, didn’t end up smelling very nice.

Events like this one are a bit like birthdays, or Christmas, or a big meal that you have been slaving all day to make – gone in the blink of an eye. Dragging the gigantic dining set through the London Underground to get to Trafalgar Square, we set up in a matter of minutes while the cawing, vulture-like press photographers jostled into position. Bang on midday, Sarah-Jane came out of a taxi from around the corner, whipped of her dressing gown and lay down onto the plate with only a slinky pair of nude coloured knickers and her hands to cover her modesty. Snap snap snap, and then the photographers were off on their next assignment. Job done.

The hours searching and running out to collect things and the worry and frustration DID pay off for this event. The plate demo got coverage in lots of newspapers and online magazines and even featured in the last round of Have I Got News for You. The more coverage, the greater reach and the greater chance of touching people enough so they make the decision to leave suffering out from their diet. The success of the event I think, was down to the strong imagery and simplicity of the message – your food is not a what, but a who. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trfYaDAq_CE&feature=plcp

Getting Back in the Blogging Saddle

Oops.

If I’m completely honest, seeing a project to completion is my weak point. I’m full of energy and enthusiasm at the start and in the middle of a project, but that also means I become full of energy and enthusiasm for the next project and consequently tend to drift away from properly completing the current one.

What happened was, I got the internship with the organisation I applied for a job at – PETA UK – and for the last six months I have been fighting for Animal Rights. Blogging would have been a crazily good way of documenting my adventures but, I got caught up in the workload excitement and personal blogging took a back seat. Now that I have a few more hours on my hands and because a blog would really be a nice way to document my internship, I shall write about it from the beginning.

Week One

The main tasks during my Campaigns internship was planning direct action, research and event organising, interspersed with information database management, promoting media coverage of events, organising and mailing literature requests and trying to get in on anything fun and exciting.

Within the first few days I was at my first celebrity photo shoot. Kimberly Wyatt, ex Pussycat Doll and now solo artist as well as co-founder of cruelty-free cosmetic range BM Beauty, had agreed to do an advert to help raise awareness of and push through the EU Cosmetics Directive. In essence, the EU was supposed to toughen up on animal testing for cosmetics, banning the sale of tested products within the EU which was to come into effect on the 11 March 2013. So far the Directive hasn’t been implemented and now is at high risk of being delayed, some say indefinitely.

PETA wanted to have an ad which highlighted the plight and suffering of animals who are tested on and in collaboration with photographer Karl Grant, came up with a beautiful idea of using a reflection to reveal the ugly side of beauty. The shoot took all afternoon to get right but the result was great. Featured and talked about in fashion magazines and national newspapers, it directed a lot of people to pledge their support for the ban via PETA UK’s web page.

Six months down the line and we are STILL trying to push through the ban. Most recently LUSH in collaboration with Humane Society International held an event in their Regent Street store which received national and international coverage for its hard-hitting portrayal of what it is like for animals who are exploited in laboratories. Hopefully these actions will urge the EU to do the right thing and put an end to animal tests for vanity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4K9iSyj_lk

Jack into the conversation on Twitter via #fightinganimaltests