Political Protests, The Beginnings #1

To begin with there was two possible topics we wanted to focus on. These were the corruption/exploitation in large corporations and the misuse of face-down restraint.

After weighing up these two issues and moving through the potential they both possessed, we settled face-down restrain and mistreatment of patients in the nhs. We chose this because we are all passionate about how its used so frequently and so violently in cases where arguably it wasn't necessary and where the worker hadn't always had the right training to carry it out. It was also the issue that we found we could draw more research from websites and books as well as it having more creative potential.

To begin the formation of our protest, we started with research, lots and lots of research. This is because we are all very aware that to do a piece on mental health and the treatment in the nhs is quite difficult as there is always the easy mistake of portraying it in a very stereotypical and almost offensive way, especially since none of us have even been emitted into a mental health hospital and so its hard to grasp a realistic idea of what its actually like. A key example of this is portraying mentally ill patients who are just having crazy fits all the time, this is what most people assume everyone in a mental hospital is like but in fact it isn't the reality. You can be admitted into a mental health hospital for illnesses like bipolar, schizophrenia or major depression and extreme suicidal behavior.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
The main points we want to demonstrate is that often the people on which face-down restraint is used on are not so far from us, they are just normal people who struggle in life. One of our first ideas was to have the 'patients' in plain clothes casually interacting with others around the school, maybe they might ask if they have a pen they can borrow or comment on something nice their wearing, either way it would be a very simple day to day interaction that all of us have done without thinking to much of it. Then out of nowhere two doctors, who are deeming the patient a 'threat' come and pull the patient away into face down restraint. The patient will of course struggle and squirm but because of the panic arising due to being physically restrained, not due to them having a mental 'fit' or anything else that someone could assume happens. As this is happening another doctor goes up to the people the patient was just talking to and bombards them with questions about if their hurt or what were they asking you, preceding to tell them all to move along as there's nothing to see here, while the patient yells facts about face down restraint in an effort to cry for help and justice. 

Although this idea was strong we found that the line between looking like the patient was having a fit and looking like it was a struggle to not be restrained was a fine line and we could be endanger of tipping into the wrong side of that. We also all agreed that as this was our first idea this would not be our final piece, we had to develop and push it to become more powerful and artistic.