Final Assignment

Creative Revision 

aka: Your pitch to change the world

CASE ONE: While trying to figure out a way to solve issues like poverty and unequal punishment in the so-called "war on drugs," David Simon decided that instead of writing a long editorial to the New York Times, he would better reach his audience by creating a TV show. He used HBO, a network known for taking creative risks. Members from the cast will, for example, go speak to students at Harvard about the causes of poverty to be sure that the show's intentions are being thoroughly understood and discussed.

CASE TWO: While trying to figure out how to end crime in New York City in the 1980s, the creators of the "Broken Windows" theory came up with a simple plan: clean up broken glass and erase all graffiti from the subways every single day. The crime rate went through a revolutionary shift and New York's crime rate-- for both murder and petty crimes, has been much better ever since.

CASE THREE: While trying to figure out why anti-smoking campaign tend to fail for teenagers, Malcolm Gladwell realized that these campaigns have never truly delve into the reasons why people decide to smoke in the first place. He had a hunch, and interviewed all of his friends and acquaintances, and found that everyone he knew who chose to smoke had a distinct memory of a favorite person-- an especially unique aunt, cousin or friend-- who smoked, but who also had a way of engaging with life that they found special, unique, full of some intuitive wisdom that was both risky and life affirming. Which is to say that the psychological underpinnings for smoking were entwined with that person's deepest sense of self and their understanding of how to live their life. Understanding the full complexity of this, Gladwell argued, should change the way we approach anti-smoking campaigns. 

For your Creative Revision, I'd like to invent a solution to the problem at the root of your controversy. Solve it and begin designing a way to put this plan into motion. The plan and any subsequent materials that you use to illustrate this plan will be part of what you present for your final presentation and turn in for your final project. This plan must involve working with other people through the form of an interview, a survey, or some mode of public engagement that you come up with on your own.

The first due date for this assignment is Monday, April 18th. You will need to type up a one-page, single spaced proposal explaining the way in which you plan to invent a solution to your controversy's problem. Depending on the extent of the plan you come up with, your Creative Revision may be more of an elaborate plan in which various elements are explained and illustrated, much like a portfolio that you'd give to your boss in order to illustrate an advertising campaign. Or, your plan may be feasible enough to begin work on before the assignment is due, in which case you'll be presenting a finished project to the class during your presentation. The second due date is Wednesday, April 27th, when the class will begin presenting these ideas. 

In the proposal, you'll need to include a thoughtful consideration of the following:

• What have you come to understand in the past few weeks about the way you are able to communicate with other people about your controversy? Are they bored by it? Confused? Do they tend to know more about it than you? Do they need so much background information that you end up giving a history lesson?
• In plainest terms, and in your own opinion, what is the biggest problem at the heart of your controversy?
• Who is the most prominent victim of this problem? Identify five specific characteristics of this person or persons (ie: they wear ____, they listen to ____ on the radio, etc.)
• Who can help alleviate the problem? Identify five specific characteristics of this person or persons (ie: they wear ____, they listen to ____ on the radio, etc.)
• Who then will your target audience be as you work to solve it? Identify five specific characteristics of this person or persons (ie: they wear ____, they listen to ____ on the radio, etc.) How can they best be reached? 
• What will your "public intervention" be? An interview? A survey? An experimental performance piece on the mall? You and a bull horn? You dressing up as someone else to see how they are treated throughout the course of a day? BE CREATIVE.
• What do you want them to do once you've gotten them to think about the issue?
• Write a detailed description of the most ideal consequence of your bringing this issue to the attention of your desired audience.
• Explain what steps you will take to demonstrate the legitimacy of your proposal before your presentation is due.

It is important that you realize that your proposal is like the assignment sheet you are drafting for yourself, and you get to determine the way in which you will ensure to have done sufficient work. If your proposal is insufficient, you will need to revise it so that you are holding yourself to a high (or if you tend to go overboard, reasonable) enough standard.