Act For Peace – The Ration Challenge

Despite the fact that the majority of public opinion is in favour of supporting the plight of refugees in Australia, there is an acute lack of positive action by most people on the very same issue. This short, sharp and punchy video created for Act For Peace, was designed to draw attention to this paradox and to incite viewers to take action by participating in the 2015 Ration Challenge.

The video captures the public’s very raw (and often passionate) reactions to a social experiment, with an actor holding an inflammatory sign ‘Refugees are scum’ in a very public space. Digital Storytellers hid two cameras to capture the public engaging with our brave actor holding the sign (and then we had  run after each person who reacted to ask them to sign a release form to allow us to use the footage! )The public’s reaction was so strong that police were called by several people making complaining about the sign. In fact, a local migration lawyer even went back to his office with a colleague and prepared a counter-banner to hold up, (but by that time the police had shut us down).

The video was successful in, not only provoking those featured in the video into expressing their true support for the refugee issue, but also in capturing the public’s attention.  The video has had over 1.45million views, 21,000 likes and 2,000 comments and 5,200 shares. Even Ashton Kutcher got in on the action, sharing the video on his widely read content curation site A+!