Beyond the rainbow: Celebrating SOY
When I worked at the Sherbourne Health Centre, I had the incredible opportunity to create a promotional campaign for the annual SOY bowlathon. Supporting Our Youth, or SOY, is a long-running suite of innovative programs that connect with and support 2SLGBTQQIA+ youth in Toronto. The annual bowlathon is both a critical fundraising event and a celebration of that community.
During my creative brief prep, I was informed that the goals for the 16th bowlathon were to be able begin stewarding corporate partners, specifically Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs and organizations that had 2SLGBTQQIA+ or diversity programs. So the final product needed to reflect the diversity of the SOY community and be polished enough to present to a CSR rep.
After spending quite a lot of time sketching bowling alleys, I realized that bowling balls looked like they had faces. I started thinking about the beautiful marbled textures that many of the balls had and how they were galaxy remixes of a handful of colours. This got me to thinking about how far we’ve come in our language and understanding of queerness, gender and sexuality in the past decade alone and how the rainbow flag at times doesn’t feel adequate in capturing the depth and multitudes of our identities.
Inspired this absolute melange of thoughts, I created a series of watercolour bowling balls with excited expressions. They became my cast of characters over the six week campaign leading up to the bowlathon which included print packages for teams, recruitment posters in the community, newsletters, a facebook event, and targeted online advertising.
The bowling balls carried through to the event, appearing on thank you cards and the photo booth backdrop.
The end result was a start to finish branded campaign that appealed to corporate partners while celebrating 2SLGBTQQIA+ diversity in playful and sophisticated ways. The event exceeded its fundraising target and established itself as a viable option for CSR programs looking for an event to support.