My Name is Simon and I like to Do Drawings

Ok… my name really isn’t Simon. It’s Judy. Hello! Nice to meet you, lovely blog reader(s). I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on my deliverables for my client on this project for My Island – My Community, a radio program that uses Entertainment Education to tackle awareness and behavior on climate change in the Eastern Caribbean.

One of those deliverables is to devise a Measurement & Evaluation strategy so that PCI Media can measure the attitudes and opinions of the radio listeners about the program that is set to air later this year. (Hello Dr. Bavon’s Program Evaluation class!) In my reading I’ve stumbled upon utilizing sketching and photography as a means to capture qualitative data. It’s fascinating!

“In taking stock of the sociology of visuals – whether in the form of sketches or photos – it is not difficult to discern the obvious conclusion: almost all paintings, sketches, and photos are usually produced by ‘the powerful; the established, the male, the colonizer, to portray the less powerful, less established, female and colonized (Harper, 1994: 408). We advocate handing over the means of visual production to the oppressed, the silent and the muted.”*

Because my project explicitly targets those muted and silent members of society, this fits in nicely with my Measurement & Evaluation piece. I tested it out yesterday, in fact on myself. I sat down and and sketched out a photo of what climate change means to me. Here is what I came up with.

As I was drawing this for some reason I wanted to have litter raining from the sky, and as I thought about it further it depicts how often we don’t know where litter comes from. Sometimes it does even feel like bottles and cans fall from the sky. . . especially when it’s everywhere and no one picks it up. But litter shouldn't be everywhere, nor should it litter our beaches as it affects the entire fragile ecosystem.

It would be really neat to see my classmates depict their particular issues they are addressing in their summer projects. From prison reform in Uganda to accessible art in Shanghai – the Clinton School of Public Service students are doing some pretty amazing things this summer! Little Debbie Snack – I know you have paints and art supplies in Chitre, Panama. Show us your work!!!

*Lifted from “With an Antenna We Can Stop the Practice of Female Genital Cutting” by Karen Greiner, Arvind Singhal, Sarah Hurlburt