Collaboration to beat the bullies

A talented art and design student’s creative ideas to tackle bullying will soon be featured in schools across Hartlepool. Working to a brief handed to her by the Hartlepool Borough Council’s Youth Support Service and Stand Together Group from Throston Youth Centre, Ebanni Goodwin delivered a two-week challenge in two days.

The Hartlepool College of Further Education student’s message on posters to highlight the anti-bullying ‘It’s never OK’ slogan has impressed the Youth Service and her tutors. The posters have already been shared online and across social media and Ebanni’s work proved to be the perfect spin-off from Anti-Bullying Week earlier this month. 

Hartlepool College’s creative studies tutor Lauren Morrell said: "The young people at the Youth Services were coming up with ideas to create a campaign for bullying and they needed design skills to be able to turn their ideas into reality. Ebanni worked really hard on this project. She was given two weeks to complete and delivered in two days, researching inspiration and ideas for the production of the final design. She demonstrated resilience throughout when making the changes required. This was an excellent real-life brief for Ebanni to develop skills, knowledge, and experiences when working with clients and the Youth Service were impressed with how quickly she delivered the brief.”

Ebanni is in the first year of a two-year National Extended Diploma in Art and Design Practice and designed three posters for the Council’s Youth Support Services.  The posters encouraged those who are being bullied to speak up and encourage bystanders to stand up to those who bully others. 

Hartlepool Council’s Rachael Garlick said: “Stand Together are a group of young people who meet weekly at Throston Youth Centre. “Their main aim is to explore social issues that affect the community. Every year they look at ways to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day which is held in January. They have looked at how discrimination and prejudice and othering of minority groups can lead to genocide. Holocaust Memorial Day has a theme each year and this year’s is Ordinary People. They wanted to consider how ordinary people can make a stand against discrimination and support people. 

“This led to conversations about bullying in schools and the roles that people play. They looked at the people involved, the bully, the bullied and the bystander, and wanted a way to reach out to all of those people in an attempt to make them examine and change their actions, speak up if they need help or have the courage to intervene and help others. They decided to develop a poster campaign and explored what they feel would have the most impact before creating the content for the posters and sending a brief to Ebanni. We have shared these posters online and have plans to distribute posters to schools, youth centres, and colleges.”

You can view and download all 3 posters from the link below to use in your own communities and /or organisation.