Heartstopper Final Intervention
When deciding on doing my project I took the idea of how to explain such intense concepts, like bullying, eating disorders and mental illness to children without it being so complicated. I had watched Heartstopper with my nieces and we eventually read the books and by the end of the series they really understood a lot of the concepts I had difficulty explaining. Taking inspiration from the text, “People need to make meanings out of ideas, and one of the ways they do this is through stories. Narratives are a way to string together facts and figures, characters, and motivations.” (Duncombe, Lambert. p.100)
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| The entire collection of alice oseman books. |
We decided to use the Heartstopper series by Alice Oseman as a guideline to focus and explain topics such as bullying and how it affects your mental health. It was our goal to validate mental health and to also educate people on what Heartstopper is. My focusing on mental health was important because of my current experience being mentally ill, and my reasoning for advocating is inspired by Kimberly Drew’s reasoning for advocating for black art. “I knew that I wanted to record as many Black artists as possible for anyone like me, who needed to see more art by Black people.” (Drew, p.22)
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| Mikeyla with one of her posters and info cards. |
Telling the story about the experiences a queer mentally ill person goes through was super important to me. I gave Mikeyla and Mikenzie free rain in making their posters as long as they stuck to the topics of bullying and eating disorders. Mikeyla made a poster talking about the common signs you’d see in a person with Anorexia Nervosa. Mikenzie made posters talking about how we should all be kind to one another. She also made one saying that mental illness looks different on everyone and that just because someone looks happy doesn't mean they are happy. She took inspiration from one of our favorite artists Harry Styles where she uses his song lyrics from Treat People with Kindness. When giving out the cards we took inspiration from Civil Rights Movement posters where less is more. “Simple Message, Bold type, Strength in number”(Siegler)
A couple days after making the posters we decided to go outside, put them up in our neighborhood and hang around the entrance to the park passing out little cards saying “Treat People With Kindness” and “Mental Health Matters”. When we only ended up engaging with two people but both were super appreciative. The first woman said that the kids were really sweet and hugged them. The second person told us they had actually taken pictures of the poster we had put up to show her son. She also told us about her past experience working for a crisis hotline. The woman told us about how proud she was to see such young children advocating for something so important.
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| Mikenzie with her sign about how we should treat people. |
Artist inspirations:
Kimberly Drew, and how she taught me that being an artistic activist doesn’t mean that you have to be artsy, you just have to advocate for the art and the artist’s message.
Harry Styles for making such an important song about how we should treat people.
Alice Oseman for creating such a beautiful universe in Heartstopper that talks openly about sexual identity, gender theory, feminism, queerness, mental illness, bullying, the faults in the educational systems, and so much more.
Lady Gaga for always being an advocate for mental health and so much more.
Civil Rights activists signs for promoting a simple but effective method of advocating.
Works Cited
Drew, K. (2020). This Is What I Know About Art. Penguin.
Duncombe, S. Lambert, S. (2021). The Art of Activism. OR Books.
Siegler, B. (2018). Signs of Resistance: A Visual History of Protest in America.
Oseman A. (2019) Heartstopper. Volume 1. Hodder and Stoughton.
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