Tak-A-Yak

In the spring of 2015, HWS campus was shaken by ongoing racist, sexist, and otherwise hateful posts to the anonymous social media site Yik Yak. Mosaic NY decided to create a guerrilla theatre intervention to address the issue. We created a series of large posters to place around campus and in the student center with screenshots of the Yaks and a note that read "You may not have said this, but someone on our campus did." We also printed out copies of the yaks and had members of the community read them out loud into a megaphone in the student center during the lunch rush. The Yaks were contextualized by members of Mosaic NY as they were calling people over to read them, and then they were taped to the body of company member Nicolas Shannon Savard as a means of taking away the silence / anonymity and demonstrating the real impact these statements have on people. At the end of all of that, participants were handed a lollipop with an attached statement about Yakking positively. Members of Mosaic simultaneously overwhelmed Yik Yak with positive Yaks for the rest of the day. 

Photo credit HWS Office of Communications