Goal of the event:
We wanted to shed some light on how important it is to have accessible higher education institutions. The university to many of us has become a part of our daily routine, but we rarely stop and think that many of the activities would be hindered if that same university would not be accessible. Everyone has the right to education. We thought that doing an EA themed mannequin challenge would be the right format for this since one is bound to be ''frozen'' in action if the educational institutions are not accessible. In addition, we wanted to promote mobility especially now that tuition fees in Finland will come in effect starting August of 2017 and there have been education cuts, which has been criticised by many and there were protests all over the country because of that. We wanted to draw attention to the accessibility level (which is quite good at University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu Campus, but there could be some improvements) and get the university and the students involved in this more.
Short description of the event:
One of the active members of ESN Joensuu came up with the idea, which is why the sections should talk about the project more because the LEACs could actually have their own EA teams. We had an International Music Evening on the 25th of November, during which the LEAC of the section did a short EA themed activity, talked about the project and the upcoming EA Week (big hit by the way, we got a lot of attention and some people started contacting us about them wanting to be more involved and wanting to organise more EA events). After this the idea to have the EA themed mannequin challenge was introduced and we said that we'll create an event so that they would know all the details.
Soon after that, the event was created with the description of the EA Week, the reason why we want to do it and the examples of other mannequin challenges. We contacted some of the local students with disabilities, explained the cause and invited them to join us for the filming. We also contacted the Student Union of the University of Eastern Finland (ISYY) asked the staff and the executive board members to participate in the filming. We collected any material we thought we could use in the filming - we had laminated signs saying ''Accessibility for me is...'' and asked the participants to fill in the empty spaces, we brought a song book in Braille (a song book is a material used for a sistsit - a Finnish/Swedish academic event with lots of singing) and our section flags (sadly, we do not have an EA flag yet).
On the day of the event we gathered in the agreed location and had a discussion with the participants about the reasons why are doing this particular event. They were asked to look around the building and find spaces that, in their opinion, are a)accessible and b)not accessible. After that they split into groups and were given some time to brainstorm some ideas about how their group should be ''frozen'' and how would it reflect the goal of the event.
While we were doing that, we actually received some attention from the passers-by and they, after hearing the reasons why we are doing this, were very eager to join. We also had some people from the cafeteria joining us. Lastly, we wanted to do the last part of the filming in the library, so we asked the library staff to join as well - after explaining the goal of the event they were very happy to join in as well and agreed to be in the video themselves.
Lastly, our camera person filmed the participants in both locations and we had a discussion about the need of having accessible higher education institutions and the importance of having such platforms as MappED! so that the mobility for students with disabilities would be promoted more.
How did your event go?:
We believe the event went really well having in mind the fact that most of the exchange and international Master's Degree students were getting ready for their trip to Lapland that same night.
We received an overwhelmingly positive feedback from the participants, the Student Union representatives and the library staff. Since we posted the video in every possible platform, we received even more attention, and so did the project itself. Quite a large number of participants agreed that they had no idea about the existence of and the need for some of the accessible spaces we explored (like elevators with buttons in Braille, automatic doors and the entrance for wheelchairs to one of the bigger auditoriums). For this reason we think we managed to raise awareness about accessibility. As it was mentioned earlier, we were contacted by some of the participants about them wanting to contribute and help organising EA events next semester (they have some brilliant ideas already).
For the next time we could possibly involve more people and maybe make this a part of a bigger EA event. Another issue that we had with this is that the video can only play on computers, not mobile devices, due to the fact that we do not have the rights to the song we used in the filming.
