People with Disabilities Take to the Streets for MakeWayDay
As International Day of Persons with Disabilities approaches this Sunday 3rd December, DDFH&B\JWT Dublin's MakeWayDay campaign continues to gain traction. MakeWayDay aims to raise awareness of how often people with disabilities in Ireland face obstructions caused by everyday objects left on the footpath, such as sandwich boards, bicycles, cars, bin bags, and hedges.
A people-powered activation, MakeWayDay positively repositioned people living with disabilities as proactive, agitating themselves for equal consideration on the streets - not the passive recipients of a campaign message.
MakeWayDay kicked-off earlier this year with a compelling tweet from Dublin's Lord Mayor. The agency's creative team, Leo Bartoli and Neil Harrison, persuaded Dublin’s Lord Mayor to tweet that he was going to ask the city to vote on whether people with disabilities should have to use cycle lanes to make way for sandwich boards on the sidewalk - generating instant controversy and conversation.
At the second stage, they mobilised their online army of advocates to share countless photos and videos of obstructions blocking their way, making the case for the need for better awareness and consideration better than any one piece ever could.
The agency partnered with the Disability Federation of Ireland, engaging 14 of the nation’s disabilities organisations behind the project. Make Way Day marks the first time these organisations have come together under one campaign.
Leo Bartoli, Creative at DDFH&B\JWT Dublin, comments: “This is a real issue for people with disabilities and they want to take power into their own hands. So, we created a national day of action encouraging people with disabilities to get out onto the street to draw attention to the issue. People immediately started adopting the hashtag organically. It was not only MakeWayDublin but also MakewayGalloway, Cork, other cities. We knew it was a real opportunity to make it more impactful.”
Roisin Keown, Head of Creative at DDFH&B\JWT Dublin, comments: “So far, the campaign has been met with great success, with the conversation around MakeWayDay and the calls for local councils, cities and countries to adopt their own stretching several times around the globe including South Africa, Australia, the USA and China. Our ambition was never that it should be a local Irish activation. Instead by making the stickers available for free from the website makewayday.com, we are empowering people all over the world to petition their local authority to create a MakeWayRio, MakeWayDurban or MakeWayShanghai – in order to make every day on our streets a MakeWayDay for all citizens equally.”
