Unleashing a festival of possibilities

Their Challenge

Centre for Social Impact, a national research institute, had a vision of addressing community apathy in finding solutions on social issues across Perth, Australia: Indigenous representation in government, sustainable energy, and food security for people experiencing homelessness. Unlike Melbourne and Sydney — communities regularly participating in activism — Perth’s community has historically been apathetic towards civic participation. In a short six-week time frame, CSI asked DrawHistory to relaunch its festival, rethink their audience messaging and bring their vision for the community alive online.

Our Strategy

DrawHistory created a brand identity that was immediately accessible to more than just those ‘in the know’, but more widely stakeholders around Australia. The new Social Impact Festival brand invites each group to share and connect about the critical issues and important ideas impacting their lives and those around them. We worked with the CSI team and volunteers for two consecutive years to not only configure their communications but build their capacity to spread the word throughout the event.

Reverse-engineering the conversation

In facilitating workshops with leadership, we identified that the festival needed to completely rebrand. The festival, in its previous iteration, carried specific perceptions we didn’t want for a festival: theoretical and institutionally-driven.

We needed to simplify the message: the new Social Impact Festival is for everyone, everywhere, ready to catalyze change.

In speaking with and sharing observations from previous attendees, partners and volunteers, we helped CSI gain insight and data of people’s experiences. This knowledge, paired with our own design research, helped crystallize their belief that the festival should be as inclusive and as pragmatic as possible. The idea of shifting people’s perceptions of a “social impact festival” became our core remit.

An identity to drive collaboration

Centred around the core attributes of Unifying, Purpose-driven and Catalytic, the patterns, icons and colors all mix to communicate what the festival is about — a community of big possibilities.

In both Year 1 and Year 2 iterations of the brand, we made sure that the festival team was able to take ownership of their brand elements and create something uniquely different each time, whether for social content or event collateral.

We also implemented a rule to guide the team in combining our brush strokes, representing action, organic shapes, representing community, and hand-painted textures, representing a joint effort, to communicate this brand.

Community Outcome

In the two years we helped CSI, we made sure that the festival team and partner organizations (other community organizers, activists, civil society organizations) were able to promote their own events.

In developing a toolkit that community organizers could use to promote their events, the festival saw a 300% increase in attendance year-on-year. In Year 1, attendees jumped from 2,000 to over 4,400 — and by Year 2, this number rose to 6,500 with 94% of guests surveying positively of the events.

With the help of the rebrand, the festival became one of the largest social impact festivals in the Indo-Pacific.