Mass Media and Gender at Trafalgar School for Girls

Digital Literacy Project facilitators Robin Kelly and Victoria Nam worked with students at Trafalgar School for Girls. They offered a gender theory and photoshop workshop at Trafalgar School for Girls which focussed on Mass Media and Gender.

The course was multimedia in every way possible.


 

 

 

 

All the support material for the class was available on a blog set up specifically and only for this group.

The group learnt various theoretical frameworks for unpacking gender constructs found in the world of advertising.

They also read and critiqued blogs about gender and advertising written by other young women and contributed their observations to the class blog by commenting on each other’s analysis.

After digesting many theoretical ideas and being exposed to new ways of looking at examples of advertising, each student chose a specific advertisement and used Photoshop to alter and transform the images. With the support of the facilitators, each student created an ‘open letter’ to the world of advertising. These ‘open letters’ formed imagery which critiqued the mainstream view of gender in mass media. Students wrote an artist statement explaining her work and describing the techniques used. Each statement was also posted on the blog.

The students then chose a specific advertisement and used Photoshop to alter and transform the images, with the support of the facilitators, each student created an ‘open letter’ to the world of advertising. These ‘open letters’ formed imagery which critiqued the mainstream view of gender in mass media.

 

At the end of the session, we printed all the pieces in poster format and each student presented her piece to the class.

Robin elaborates:

“The best part of this workshop is the big critique at the end, when we put all the posters up and talk about them. This is when we really see the students pull together everything they’ve learned and explain how they’ve used design to create their own message with their poster. This year I was blown away by the students receptiveness and their level of analysis. Even the students who weren’t so sure at first ended up producing some pretty interesting posters!”

An example of their work:

Student work