Creating A Scene : Call to speak up
A recent campaign that created a buzz recently was the “Create A Scene” campaign: Not on my Bus. The Not on My Bus campaign was implemented by Oxfam in Sri Lanka as a country-level adaptation of Oxfam International’s global Enough Campaign which aims at challenging social norms that perpetuate violence against women and girls and gender inequality.
The campaign aimed at encouraging bystanders to stand up to public harassment, and as part of its campaign organized a short film competition which concluded recently.
The Not On My Bus campaign is a call-to-action; focusing on changing norms which dissuade bystanders from intervening to stop or prevent sexual harassment on public transport. The campaign encourages bystanders to play a more active role in creating a safe space for women and girls travelling in public transport.
The Not On My Bus video competition invited applicants over the age of 16 years to submit a creative, short video clip that could bring out an impactful message that encouraged bystanders to intervene.
The main categories included :
Best intervention
Most Powerful Message
Most Inclusive Video
An award ceremony held at the national film corporation, recognised the following winners:
Most Powerful Message: Balasundaram Ramanakaran, Oshadi Vidanarachchi and Tinaz Amit
Most inclusive video: Ruvuthuran Santhirapillai
Best Intervention: Janani Lakshani
Best Intervention (Runner up): Shyamila Wasala (Health Channel)
Merit awards: Noah Rozary, Harsha Wimalasiri, Joel Jarius
The National Transport Commission (NTC) of Sri Lanka has pledged to develop all winning entries and display them in digital screens set up in buses and bus depots.
Glimpse at the Most Powerful Message Award winners
Filming in progress
“I’m the writer of the two,” Tinaz told us. “I have a personal blog and I write poetry and prose. However, I haven’t done script writing of this level before, so this was the first time.”
Oshadi was photographer and videographer for the film while his specialty was street photography. When not making statements through short films, Tinaz is a PR Manager at Omnicom Media Group and Oshadi is a photographer at Jonathan’s Studio.
Having done a poetry performance video for one of the previous campaigns for Oxfam, the duo were only too happy to sign up on their own for this one.
“We first looked into what areas the competition wanted us to focus on,” Tinaz said. “Then we realized that everyone will definitely talk about female harassmen, because that is what always gets attention. We wanted to show that there is more to it than what people generally see, the fact that harassment has no gender; it can happen to anyone. We even thought about showcasing the harassment that children go through, which is more brutal because they sometimes don’t even know that they are being harassed. But we had logistical issues in portraying children.
Oshadi and I both have a common thinking in our work; he in his photos and I in my writing – we both try to see the other side or the untold side of the story. So we wanted to do the same with this project as well.”
Thinking about it further, they came up with the concept for their riveting statement on men being harassed in public transport. The challenge came when arranging the logistics of shooting, because while it should appear as a public scenario, it’s impossible to get consent from an entire bus full of random passengers.
“We had to pay for a bus and get them on board just for the filming. We then had to get people on the bus so that it wouldn’t be empty. We were lucky enough to have a set of amazing friends who came to our rescue,” Tinaz said.
Having been taken by surprise as they were awarded the prize for most powerful message, they shared their feelings of absolute shock, pleasure and happiness as it was for a great cause. They also stated that the overall response at the ceremony and following which had been a great experience, with many people and communities approaching them.
The duo were approached by representatives of the LGBTQ community who appreciated their work. For the team it was heartening to be able to reach the level of an audience as they did with their film.
Tinaz
Oshadi
“The team of ‘Let’s move forward’ is not just Oshadi and I. We had an amazing cast, all friends and family, who simply said Yes when we asked them for help.
We have all been very touched by the outcome of the film and the response we are still getting for it,” said Tinaz.
Adding that the ‘Create A Scene’ campaign is crucial to society, more so because it happens to many on a regular basis.
“After all, we are creating a scene on behalf of all of us.”
Catch Oshadi’s photography at instagram.com/oshadih/(PJ)