Barefoot Words: Women Peacemakers (Paraules Descalces: Dones fent Pau)

is campaign intended to raise awareness about the role of women in conflict situations and as peacemakers. It is designed to make the United Nation Security Council Resolution 1325 visible, and consists of photographs and texts taken from projects undertaken in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

 It has been produced by the International Catalan Institute for Peace (ICIP), which shares with me a passion to explore new languages that facilitate raising awareness about current political and social events and related to a Culture of Peace and to Human Rights.

Look at the photo gallery of the exhibition at different locations in Catalonia.

In a campaign with the purpose of raising awareness and denouncing, the question is how to reach the public; how to maximise the impact of the initiative. The answer in this case was to apply strategies and support media such as those used in publicity and institutional campaigns.

In concrete terms, we decided to take the photographs out to the street (knowing that if we showed them inside the Institute the type of public visiting the exhibit would very likely already be “aware”), using materials and support aids already in existence and common in the urban scheme.

We showed reproductions of the photographs and texts in very large formats, in tower-like structures installed on the street, which ensured greater visibility (having greater “impact”). Since the possibility to interest the mass media increases with this method, it results in more publicity, also broadening the knowledge pool about the subject of the campaign and its leading characters among society at large. We also should not disregard the fact that this type of exhibit is much cheaper and easier to mount than a conventional show in a conventional space.