Category Archives: Audiences

Kiva Is Not Quite What It Seems

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Interesting critique of microfinance charity Kiva’s representation of itself, by David Roodman on his Microfinance Open Book Blog.

Our sensitivity to stories and faces distorts how we give, thus what charities do and how they sell themselves. What if the best way to help in some places is to support communities rather than individuals? To make roads rather than make loans? To contribute to a disaster preparedness fund rather than just respond to the latest earthquake? And how far should nonprofits go in misrepresenting what they do in order to fund it? It is not an easy question: what if honesty reduces funding?

http://blogs.cgdev.org/open_book/2009/10/kiva-is-not-quite-what-it-seems.php

Good intentions are not enough

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I was referred to the site Good Intentions by my friend Brian Gough who works for Task Furniture in Education in Cologne. Good Intentions houses critical articles and debates about the effectiveness of aid projects, aiming ‘to provide donors with the knowledge and tools they need to make informed funding decisions’. From her experiences in Thailand working on post-Tsunami aid programmes, founder Saundra Schimmelpfennig observed that:

It quickly became apparent that many poor aid practices were a result of charities trying to attract or keep donors. The donors themselves were unaware of the many misconceptions they held about aid. These misconceptions combined with the lack of easily accessible information made it almost impossible for donors to give in ways that matched their good intentions.

http://goodintents.org/about

I’m interested in that first statement, describing charities ‘trying to keep or attract donors’ – chimes in with my own analysis of the relationship of design for development projects to first world audiences, sometimes to the detriment of users.

Things that Talk

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I’m at the Max-Planck Institute in Gottingen, who fund my postdoc position, using their excellent little library. Looking for books on objects and object studies, I find the book ‘Things that Talk – Object lessons from art and science’, edited by Lorraine Daston (Zone Books, 2004). In the introduction, Daston refers to ‘things, those nodes at which matter and meaning intersect’ (p.16), which is rather a nice way of describing my interest in objects as both functional and communicative. I’ve also read the whole of Kingsley Amis’ 1950s novel ‘Lucky Jim’ over the past few days while travelling, which I think is affecting my writing style (rather).

I’m also interested in her description of things used as evidence – in relation to an idea I’ve been trying to capture about the apparently self-evident truth (or ‘truthiness‘ perhaps) of objects; the way a designed object seems to act in itself as a powerful argument to onlookers, an ‘object argument’ which appears stronger than a proposal or concept. The fact of its materiality and function (thinking here of the realm of design for social impact especially) seems to persuade audiences of its value. Here Dalston writes about objects as evidence (p.12 – 13):

Historically, things have been said to talk for themselves in two ways, which, from an epistemological point of view, are diametrically opposed to one another. One the one hand, there are idols: false gods made of gold or bronze or stone that make portentous pronouncements to the devout who consult them… On the other hand, there is self-evidence: res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself. It does so in mathematics, law and religion… within Christianity, miracles were almost always worked in things, be it the body of a cripple suddenly made whole or the water turned to wine at the wedding feast, and constituted an immediate and irrefragable token of God’s will. In all these cases, the talking thing spoke the truth, the purest, most indubitable truth conceivable. The chief reason why the truth was so pure was that it had been uttered by things themselves, without the distorting filter of human interpretation.

Moscow charity gala

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An article in The Guardian newspaper today describes a high-profile ‘charity’ event held in Moscow, which uses the idea that it is ‘awareness’ raising as an excuse for it’s lack of material contribution to charity:

It was a starry event that lured some of the biggest names in Hollywood along with a sprinkling of the Muscovite elite. There was Woody Allen, playing with his jazz band after a performance by Andrea Bocelli.

There were Francis Ford Coppola and Jeremy Irons, Orlando Bloom and Steven Seagal, Sophia Loren and Dionne Warwick, all gathered in the leafy heights of southern Moscow for a charity gala like no other: this charity does not dispense its largesse.

The Federation Fund, which has presented itself as a children’s charity since forming late last year, has rapidly turned into one of the most controversial operations in a country known for opaque projects. This weekend, after weeks of billboard advertising splashed across the capital, it laid on a lavish two-day show in aid of … Well, it was not entirely clear what the event was in aid of.

The charity says it is no longer about raising funds, but raising awareness. Some of the guests said they had been paid to attend.

Doubts about the Federation Fund surfaced soon after an inaugural concert in St Petersburg this year shot it to prominence, thanks largely to Vladimir Putin’s notorious version of Blueberry Hill, which became an internet hit.

Three months after that show, the mother of a sick child wrote an open letter to the president, Dmitry Medvedev, complaining that hospitals promised donations had received nothing. The fund moved quickly to donate medical equipment to several hospitals, and then denied any wrongdoing, saying it had been set up to generate publicity, not cash.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/11/moscow-charity-authenticity-questioned?INTCMP=SRCH

This is an extreme form of something detectable in other campaigns which spend lots of money to raise ‘awareness’, with a disproportionately small material outcome, such as the RED campaign, for which Advertising Age wrote:

The disproportionate ratio between the marketing outlay and the money raised is drawing concern among nonprofit watchdogs, cause-marketing experts and even executives in the ad business. It threatens to spur a backlash, not just against the Red campaign — which ambitiously set out to change the cause-marketing model by allowing partners to profit from charity — but also for the brands involved.

http://adage.com/article/news/costly-red-campaign-reaps-meager-18-million/115287/

World Press Photo 11 review frames ‘attention’ as a “blunt instrument”

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2011 World Press Photo Omar Feisal shark
Omar Feisal, a Reuters photographer based in Somalia, won the Daily Life Single category at the 2011 World Press Photo awards with this picture of a man carrying a shark through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. Photograph: Feisal Omar/Reuters

In a review of World Press Photo 11 in The Observer on Sunday 29 May 2011, Roland Elliott Brown writes:

Many make the most of minor subjects: Feisal Omar’s picture of a Somali carrying a man-size shark through a devastated Italian colonial street is the most extraordinary, otherworldly image in the book; Marco di Lauro’s image of a Nigerian meat market conjures Hieronymus Bosch. Daniel Berehulak’s images of the Pakistan floods, by contrast, are efficient documentary shots of a traumatic, “big” news subject, but lack the streak of visual experimentation or surreal commentary that would give them “artistic” punch. Some images, such as Javier Manzano’s Mexican murder victims, have absurdity and bleak beauty to spare, but only regional resonance. The form’s tilt in favour of experienced photographers and “artistic” work enables an escape from any suggestion that juries sit in judgment over suffering humanity. Yet it also validates the photojournalist’s cliche, that their skills “bring attention to” far-flung subjects. “Attention” is a very blunt instrument, more effective locally than from afar, where it produces mostly helpless perturbation.

Nevertheless, viewers can hardly object if the pictures of pain displayed in their shelters arrive dressed up for the marketplace of their sympathies; to the extent that they do, they may need to learn to be perturbed in finer, bolder ways.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/may/29/world-press-photo-11-review

This description of ‘awareness’ as a ‘blunt instrument’ bears out the description in my thesis of the PlayPump’s ‘awareness-raising’ as limited, in that it doesn’t help to inform the viewer of the complexity of the water problem in the developing world, just of its own ability to solve it.

“Donor aversion to ‘unsexy’ water projects…”

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Fiona Harvey, Monday 27 June 2011

“A key development goal to halve the number of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015 will be missed because donor countries have diverted aid money away from “unsexy” water projects, according to the World Bank and the charity WaterAid…”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jun/27/donor-aversion-water-projects