In April 2017 the Tate approached the Pentagram-based environmental public service Do The Green Thing with a task: host a workshop to help people put their views on paper. Entitled 'Poster Power' the event was part of Wolfgang Tillmans’ edition of Uniqlo Tate Lates, a monthly event that opens up London's Tate Modern to the public in the evening.
Attended by 500 people, 'Poster Power' was a supersized workshop that needed to be easy to understand and take part in. Limited by strict material guidelines, which banned the use of pens and paints, the Do The Green Thing team created a simple toolkit for punters to make posters. This toolkit consisted of eight personalisable backgrounds which were stamped with symbols that could be applied to a multitude of social issues, hundreds of strips of letters and, as inspiration, slideshows showing dozens of historic powerful protest placards and a set of poster mad libs.
Participants were invited to choose a background and stick down their own message of anger, conciliation, passion or playfulness. The result was hundreds of visually connected and deeply personal posters that featured slogans on a wide array of issues including: “Brexit makes me very sad”, “Queer femmes against fascism”, “Cycle your way to a green world”, “Refugees welcome” and “Be proud of yourself".
