BA (Hons) Illustration students from Arts University Bournemouth (AUB) worked with industry partners and thought-provokers, LUSH, to produce posters and shorts for its Spycops event in LUSH’s new Beak Street location in Soho.
Poole-based LUSH has a history of campaigning on political and ethical issues, including same-sex marriage in Australia, helping to protect hen harriers in the UK, and banning the trophy hunting of grizzly bears in Canada. One of the famous campaigns from LUSH, launched with ‘Police Spies Out of Lives’, is #Spycops, a campaign regarding the abusive, unlawful and misogynistic deployments of undercover police officers in protest groups.
For more than four decades, Britain’s police ran a covert operation spying on thousands of citizens. The public had no knowledge of this secret operation, which involved stealing the identities of deceased children, spying on family justice campaigns and deceiving women into non-consensual sexual relationships, several of which lasted many years.
These covert policing operations involved at least 140 undercover officers spying on more than 1,000 social justice groups. The undercover police, now known as ‘spycops’ compiled confidential files on the activities and private lives of members of the public within these groups.
AUB’s BA (Hons) Illustration students were asked to to research the spycops story and shed light on it with a 10-second YouTube Shorts video. Opening on 25 October, the two-day event featured a series of talks relating to the Spycops scandal and subsequent activism.
“I created a poster and animation exploring how surveillance invades the most personal parts of our lives," says Alesha Binti Mohamad Shukor, an Illustration student at AUB. "Exhibiting my work at the event gave me a meaningful space to reflect on how creative practice can help amplify political histories.”
Vincent Larkin, Course Leader for BA (Hons) Illustration, comments, “Uplifting and positive is exactly what the students wanted the exhibition to be. I remember being concerned about the sophistication that I imagined was needed to deliver the message within this context. There was no need for concern, because the students are so intuitively on the ball in terms of getting tone and communication right, occupying the emotional punch of this difficult subject matter.
“I’m very proud of our student participants and grateful for LUSH putting us in contact with PSOOL and enabling this important project for the students to take place.”
“It was quite overwhelming and moving to see how each student sensitively yet creatively portrayed the plight of Police Spies out of Lives and the experiences the campaigners went through," adds Gemma Mordle, Technician Demonstrator at AUB, and exhibitor at the event. "I loved the way the posters echo the same materials and aesthetics the activists would have used at their own protests.”
Alison (a pseudonym to protect her anonymity) from Police Spies Out of Lives, says, “We are so extremely grateful for the opportunity of working with AUB’s Illustration students on this event. The feedback we received was amazing. We’ve spoken in lots of different contexts over the years, and this was one of the most uplifting and positive events I can remember being involved in.
“To be among so many fabulous and engaged young people was particularly wonderful; they were a superb cohort of students matched only by the LUSH team’s generosity of spirit which is really to be marvelled at.”
To find out more about Police Spies Out of Lives, visit them on Instagram, Facebook or TikTok.