Hate and love together in campaign
Focus on sectarian attitudes
A Stirling student has launched a campaign to encourage young people to consider how sectarian attitudes can affect their love lives.
‘Sectarianism is a Turn Off’ is an effort, run by an all-female team of students, to urge teens to contemplate the impact of sectarianism on potential love interests, as well as its consequences for their reputation.
First year marketing student Grace Smith created the campaign to look beyond football and explore how sectarian behaviour, including posting sectarian content online, affected how friends and classmates would view someone as a potential match.
Originally from Dumbarton, Grace (18) had previously studied advertising and PR at City of Glasgow College.
Grace says that she originally came up with the idea for the campaign last year, as part of her ‘Making a Local Campaign’ course module at Glasgow.
She said: “We created this campaign because we wanted to make people think about their own attitudes and try and move discussion of this issue away from football and violence. We’ve all came across people who either use sectarian language in company or post sectarian abuse online and there’s no getting away from the fact that it is a huge turn off for the vast majority of people.
“Loads of people are using dating apps like Tinder and Bumble these days and it’s no secret that users will go on sites like Facebook and Twitter to get more of a sense of the person who may be liking their profiles”, she added.
“If they see that you spend your time abusing others just because they are different to you, it’ll hardly encourage them to return your interest. Our message to young people is: don’t let blind hate cost you a first date.”
Leading anti-sectarian charity Nil by Mouth has teamed up with the Stirling students ahead of Valentine’s Day to highlight how sectarianism can impact on life choices and personal relationships.
‘Sectarianism is a Turn Off’ was the winning entry in the charity’s ‘Pitch Perfect’ competition, which saw teams of marketing students competing to devise a campaign to raise awareness of sectarianism in western Scotland.
The charity aims to run adverts on social media and dating apps over the next few weeks to hammer home the message that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
The campaign follows a study by the Humanist Society of Scotland, which revealed in December that one in 10 Scots would not accept a relative marrying outside their faith.
Nil by Mouth campaign director, Dave Scott, said: “One of the most depressingly recurring themes at our events has been people reflecting on how family attitudes toward boyfriends and girlfriends were often shaped by perceptions such as what school they went to, football team they supported or even their name.
“This campaign is not only trying to get people to stop and think about how their attitudes can impact on others but also on their own chances of happiness.”