From the transformation of educational and solidarity campaigns to creative ways of interpreting the city

The last Permanent Seminar of Media Education of this school year turned around images. From these, the Spanish researchers Susana de Andrés del Campo and Rocío Collado Alonso presented some of their work as teachers in the “Master’s Degree in Communication with Social Objectives”, from the University of Valladolid (Spain).

Susana de Andrés del Campo, who is also the coordinator of the Master’s Degree, described, with several examples, how the social and educational discourse of advertising campaigns has been changing over the years. This change is noticeable in the way the messages are communicated. Solidarity campaigns, for example, “abandoned the concept of the other and bet on the mirror effect”, “changed the asking for gratitude” and “those who appear in them have come to have a name.”

The changes are not, however, only at the discourse level, but also at the level of the promoters. In Spain, “educational campaigns were traditionally launched by the government,” explained Susana de Andrés del Campo, adding that “since the crisis, state investment in public service education campaigns has dropped 73.3%.” This is a role that has been taken on by the third sector and NGOs.

Rocío Collado Alonso discussed his work in the discipline of “Responsible Creativity”, in which students are invited to use creativity to “interpret the city (Segovia, in this case) and make a personal, critical and reflective reading of it.” The discipline, as explained by the teacher, assumes that “having a critical eye on our surroundings helps us to understand our position in the world we live in, allows us to know more about the environment and ourselves, to reflect on our role as individuals within the city”. The chair is based on a procedural model of learning, in which the student constructs the knowledge itself.

The seminar was also attended by Agustín García Matilla, Vicerrector del Campus María Zambrano, University of Valladolid, in Segovia, who reinforced the importance of “each student being a protagonist of their own learning” and of a school that does not feed a “immobilisation and passive vision” and emphasize the importance of students feeling as agents of society.

Text: Joana Fillol