Using whiteboards in your campaign - Sunderland

This year we've been collecting best practice from around the country on student mental health campaigning. Recently, Sunderland ran a campaign using whiteboards. Whiteboard campaigns are all the rage these days - and it's easy to understand why. They're visual, you can share the photos onto lots of people's Facebook feeds by tagging the people in them, and they're a great way of presenting lots of people's views and experiences. Sunderland recently used whiteboards at their Wellbeing event, so we asked them how they organised it and what happened.

So, Sunderland, what was the event?

We went around both university campuses (City campus and St Peters) with a whiteboard asking people what they do to keep themselves well and happy.

What was the response?

We got over 60 whiteboard responses and we uploaded most of these reposes to our Facebook page. We found this event a real success because it was the first time we have managed to engage with a large amount of students from varying courses on the university so we were really happy, especially as we got to talk about our campaign group to a lot of students who we wouldn't usually get to reach so it helped us raise the profile of our group a lot.

What do you think went well?

I think what went well for this event was instead of having a stall where people have to approach us we actively approached them and started the conversation. In the past, when we have set up a stall we have struggled to get people involved so this method was really effective and really fun too.

Any pictures of the event?

Yes!

We hope this has inspired you with ideas for future Student Minds campaigns or events! Remember, if you want to tell us about an event you've run, all you need to do is fill in our event form!