This was a theatrical project examining the relationship between class, crime, and the media, and how the area that people live in often has an impact on the way crime is reported – and that the reporting often has an impact on the lives of those living in those areas.
I was asked to run a collaborative workshop with the actors in this play – containing journalists, community reporters, and people who have had contact with the justice system. Through this workshop I was able to pull out the key things the group wanted to communicate, and I created this graphic to promote the show. It was important to emphasise the news media aspect of the story, bold reds leaning into the practices of tabloid media. The pose of the characters is a quote from the Usual Suspects, to reflect the prejudices of many outlets that make assumptions on stories based on the people and places involved in crime stories. Characters’ faces are obscured by identikit snippets, anonymising and dehumanising them while suggesting that the mental pictures people assemble of them are built from the stories of others.