Len Breen - London Against Racism

LONDON AGAINST RACISM (1984)

In 1984, my good friend and colleague, Ruhi Hamed*, had recommended me to a new, notably 'black'*, advertising group, 'London Against Racism', which had been given the contract to create a campaign promoting Anti-Racism in London by Ken Livingston and the Greater London Council (GLC).

Steve Podmore had contacted me through Ruhi and invited me to join the team. My first venture into commercial advertising was, like nearly everything I have done, a wonderful learning experience, and certainly a rich, fruitful and creative one.

I produced reams of ideas, some of which are featured here. My archive contains several A4 and A3 volumes of sketches and notes - for interested researchers.

Notes on the campaign to follow: meeting Ken Livingston and some others; the failure of the campaign; the lost masterpiece; and more.

01 - London Against Racism

Some of the posters by the group.

01 - London Against Racism

This was the last phase of the advertising program. The final design was sent to press in London papers over a period of several weeks.

It received an enormous response, all negative, from the public. I think that was largely on the grounds that it shocked the pants off everyone, or 'the public'. That is, it worked. Hurting tiny babies - what were we thinking?!

As far as that particular one goes, that part of the campaign was a great success.

And at that point someone got scared and the entire campaign was abandoned.

In general, the work of the group was quite conservative and missed a great opportunity. My best work, lost and dismissed unfortunately, could have been more effective.

A selection of my roughs follows.

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Around the same time that I worked on the campaign, I created this (the first version) painting for the 'Fight Racism Through Art' competition run by the GLC in 1984.

(It was later painted over many, many times (more on that later).

However I did extract some great unique posters from it. Some examples follow.

Looking at it all again I am further inspired to create some new versions of the portraits.

01a - London Against Racism

26 - London Against Racism - Later painting

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28 - London Against Racism - Later painting

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