Open Arms - The other side of the Mediterranean
The client: Open Arms is a Spanish NGO devoted to search and rescue at sea. Set up in October 2015, it carried out its first rescue action that same month from its base on the Greek island of Lesbos. Today their principal mission is to protect those who try to reach Europe by sea, fleeing from armed conflict, persecution or poverty.
The project: Since the very beginning of Open Arms' activity, I've been involved in the creation of different communication platforms, donation campaigns and social media strategies. Here there's a recollection of some of them.
Geography: Spain, Italy, France, UK, US.
What would you choose?
This campaign was born to defend Open Arms from the accusations of bringing illegal immigrants to Europe and its main idea was to let the general public see the drama from our perspective: if you were on a boat, standing in front of a person who is about to drown at sea, would you save their life, or let them die? This was an outdoor, print and digital campaign that was included in 2018's Book of the Best Spanish Creative Campaigns (CdC).
The line of the horizon
One of the main issues about rising awareness on the importance of Open Arms' work was that it is invisible: it happens in deep sea where nobody is watching, so nobody cares about the thousands of lives that are lost adrift each year. An awareness campaign was created starting from this idea: at what distance from the shore is the right of life lost?
From here you can see the sea
A shoutout to all the people who are no longer willing to keep quiet about deaths at sea. A 360º awareness campaign with a powerful message published in both traditional media and in other less frequent; like murals at the port of Barcelona in collaboration with Montana Colors and scannable shopping bags in stores such as Natura. All the offline pieces were built entirely by QR codes that hid reality and, at the same time, revealed it. This turned each piece into a gateway to the immersive and interactive experience of the campaign. An opportunity to see with your own eyes the other side of the Mediterranean.
Madonnas of the Mediterranean Sea
March 8th 2022: a tribute to migrant women created from the content of the photojournalists who accompany Open Arms on their rescue missions. We selected 9 portraits and gave them a photo retouch to make them look like authentic Renaissance Madonnas. To guarantee them a space on the profiles of major museums, we hacked their Instagram tagged gallery. The Louvre, the MOMA, Prado Museum, Reina Sofía, The Vatican... we tagged all the galleries that had public tagging permissions enabled. And that is how we managed to display the Madonnas of the Mediterranean in more than 10 galleries throughout Europe creating their first simultaneous, ephemeral and digital art exhibition.
