Legalitees™ is the not-for-profit t-shirt brand that puts your legal rights on the front of your tee, in plain language and upside down so that you can read them. This empowers the wearer to have their rights there when they need them. When they don’t need them, they are there to spread the word about the need to protect our civil rights. 

The back of the tee is a blank canvas for artists to tell their personal stories of stop and search. Tee #1 was created by South London artist Ishmael Lartey. Deeply personal, it depicts his brother’s stop and search which he witnessed as a child. 

The project was co-created in conjunction with Centric Community Research and Stopwatch. The Legalitees brand is a response to the gradual erosion of our civil rights.  Designed to be empowering and supportive, the logo reflects this with the two crosses representing ‘community’ and ‘activism’. The wordmark represents the ‘active and positive approach to problem solving’. And the neon yellow colour acts as a highlighter to highlight the issues raised and also symbolises the colour of law enforcement.

In the UK, our civil rights are constantly being challenged, but most people are unaware of law changes and our specific rights at the moments when we need them. This is especially true of Stop and Search, where you are 12x more likely to be stopped by police if you are Black. This number increases dramatically to 21 times for stop and searches conducted under Section 60 of the law. Our brief was to raise awareness of how stop and search disproportionately targets communities of colour.  

RESULTS: 

Legalitees was picked up in both local and national press including the BBC, Metro and South London Press, as well as a 20 minute BBC radio slot just about the project. One of the artists, Sam Lawson was featured in the Metro where he was able to talk freely about his experience of being stopped and searched multiple times for no reason. The project received over 6.4 million (and counting) organic impressions with no media spend. Notably the Legalitees™  branding made it into D&AD 2024.

Most importantly, the project galvanised a community of South London artists, activists and creators to help educate their peers about the need to know and protect our civil rights. Funds from the sale of the tees are put back into the communities who created them.