Critical Reflection - Sea the Truth - Jasmine Sharp

Sea the Truth is a campaign group that is dedicated to increasing awareness about water pollution,

with a particular emphasis on sea pollution.

When choosing this topic, we wanted to expose the severity of sewage discharge and plastic

pollution that has contaminated the waters surrounding the UK. Looking at charities such as the

West Wales River Trust, Surfers Against Sewage and Ocean's conservancy we decided that it was

important to investigate this social concern, particularly given the university's proximity to the sea.

As we faced challenges in selecting our topic, we used Hartley's methods for generating ideas to aid

us in the decision-making process. Specifically, we used his concept of "An Organized brainstorm in

'real time'", allowing each of us time to contemplate before collectively choosing the most suitable

topic for the group (Hartley, 36).

While we considered various other topics, such as the significance of mental health for young

individuals, women's rights in education, and promoting a positive attitude towards sexuality- sea

pollution ended up being the most suitable topic for our group. This issue is ongoing and has

devastating effects on the sea and rivers in the UK, therefore we believed that it was crucial to pick it

as so many have a limited awareness of the topic. An important fact which persuaded us to choose

the social issue is that the UK is becoming one of the primary polluters in Europe. Thus, motivating

us to get more young people involved in order to slow down sea pollution. It was challenging having

never met each other to decide on a topic however this was the first that we all had strong opinions

on the issue. I would recommend using Hartley’s method for future students as it really helped us to

get on the same page as a group.

Once we had decided our topic, we needed to organise a presentation which provided our seminar

group with a well-rounded idea of what we were planning to do. Within the presentation we

discussed our Exhibit focus discussing various campaign names and logos aswell as including a mood

board for our infographic. We also needed to include a content overview, our delegated team roles
and possible podcast guests. Here we all decided as a group which slides we would focus on, my

primary focus was on market research- this was where I discussed some inspiring exhibits. Wren

Miller's installation called 'Another wave is possible' demonstrated how much plastic packaging a

single household uses. He cast all of the plastic using pink dental plaster which emphasised the scale

of plastic that households use. It was quite a disturbing view of a typical family's environmental

impact. The unsettling message in his art about pollution was an element I wanted to convey to the

group getting them reduce their impact. Additionally, I found Henny Burnett's ‘365 days of plastic’

inspiring due to enormity of the project- he created an eye-catching 4m high and 6m long sculpture

which was made with 90 kilos of waste. This action was taken to demonstrate the extent of littering

in Bristol as it was equivalent to the amount of litter discarded on Baldwin Street on one busy Friday

night.

Although we had done most of our work within the seminars, we also met up a few times in Jake's

flat to ensure that our presentation was ready and everyone knew their roles. Initially we had

trouble finding dates that suited everyone however Jake asked for our schedules and found a few

times that worked for all of us. Following Hartley's advice, we stayed flexible and used scheduling

tools to find the right times aswell as writing agendas before the meetings to achieve our aims

(Hartley, 43) This was crucial for us as a group because initially we didn't know each other very well

so it was also useful to learn how everyone works together and to get to know the team. This is

something that I would recommend future students do as it was just useful in getting an idea of how

your team will work together.

In preparation for our exhibit we needed to create an infographic which worked with our logo and

our name 'Sea the Truth'. Within the infographic we aimed to include statistics and graphs which

included raw and unsettling pictures of sea creatures and beaches covered in plastic. Jemima took

lead of this element of the project and used Canva to create it. Canva was extremely vital in all of the
work which needed images- the graphics really helped with creating the poster. Many variables of

the poster were created, in the end our poster consisted of a more cartoon style which had a

nautical theme. We included slogans and sea creatures covered in plastic to emphasise the theme.

The infographic was extremely successful in our exhibition, it received many compliments which

contributed to the popularity of our stand.

The blog was an element of the project that we have been working on since the start. As a group we

have all contributed largely to the blog whether it be in providing statistics or in recording general

process of each project. Our aim with the blog was to provide our readers with a recording of all our

work as sea the truth .With the general design of the blog we kept to a blue theme in order for the

blog to be cohesive with our logo and general brand.

For the exhibit there were several things that we needed to prepare before the 11th of March (the

exhibit date). First of all, we needed to brainstorm ideas for how we were going to present our

information, how we were going to attract people and what would we needed to order. In our

presentation we proposed to include a number of things such as using the rubbish found from our

visit in Exmouth, t-shirts to wear, homemade goods and leaflets with vital information. In the end we

designed a leaflet with both important statistics aswell as one of Jemima’s designs to make it

attractive to the eye. We opted for a blue colour scheme for the table, draping it with a tablecloth

and incorporating blue netting to evoke the nautical feel. Then we placed pieces of rubbish within

the netting to amplify the sea pollution theme. We offered homemade brownies, cupcakes, and

nautical-themed sweets to attract more visitors, which proved to be the most successful aspect of

our table. Additionally, we displayed a slideshow of important facts and photos on Jemima's iPad on

a loop. One challenge we encountered was organizing our schedule to ensure two people were

always present at the table during our time slot. Despite Jake falling ill on the day of the exhibit, we

successfully adjusted our schedule as our team were all willing to compromise and help out. We
were really lucky with the team we were given as everyone was always willing to volunteer and help

out. Hartley would see us displaying ‘Positive group behaviour’ as we displayed the positive

behaviours that he discusses such as respectful communication and fair levels of participation from

each group member especially in this situation(Hartley,51).

For the podcast we began by reaching out to many different charities who focused on sea pollution.

We reached out to local charities that work on improving the Cornish coasts via messages and

emails, we believed it was best to support local charities. However as expected they were very busy,

and we were sadly not able to interview anyone from surfers against sewage and the Devon Wildlife

Trust. This led us to look at charities world-wide such as the coral nursery based in Indonesia as well

as others based in Australia and Bali however we still didn’t have much luck finding a guest. This was

a large obstacle for the group as we were reaching the deadline however, we did manage to set up a

meeting with a fantastic guest called Louie Psihoyos. He is an extremely engaged activist who has

one academy awards for documentaries that he has produced aswell as being an award-winning

photographer. However, in the end his timings did not work out which led to us having to find

another guest- this was extremely disheartening for the group as Jacob had prepared in great detail

for the interview. Nevertheless, this led to us finding Clive Roberts, the chairman of the West Wales

River Trust who was the perfect guest for our podcast. As I was the one interviewing Clive I did some

background research on him- so that I could provide well informed questions aswell as write

relevant questions for him. As I had never interviewed anyone for a podcast before I did further

research on what makes a good podcast and a good interviewer so that I could be as prepared as

possible. I looked at Louise Forster’s article and included some of her recommendations- the key

points that I took in was making sure that the podcast was well structured and planned out and

using a cheat sheet with questions and bullet points to maintain a flow within the podcast (2023).

Siobhan McHugh also helped me a lot with the podcast- she says in her book that "Most people

listen to podcasts to gain knowledge and/or to be entertained" (McHugh, 8). This was important for
me to take into consideration as we obviously aimed to provide that for the listeners. Aswell as

looking at McHugh's book I thought that it would be important to look at an actual podcast that I

enjoy and draw inspiration from them. My preferred podcast is "Call Her Daddy," which is highly

successful and features Alex Cooper the highest-paid female podcaster. When interviewing Clive, I

wanted to mirror her attentive interviewing style- as she is extremely successful in actively listening

to others and knowing when to ask new questions. When it came down to the interview it was a

great success, and we were lucky that Clive was very passionate and enthusiastic about the topic.

Clive really enlightened me on many elements of water pollution that I did not know about, and it

was fascinating learning why he become involved in the charity. His passion for the topic really

helped provide an important outlook for our group on how the next generation should provide help

for rivers within England. The most important element that I took away from the interview was that

anyone can make a difference- Clive began becoming really interested in the health of the rivers

around 8 years ago as he noticed such an abrupt change in the rivers where he was fishing. Thus, he

really showed us and our listeners that it is as simple as joining your local charity and trying to

actively make a difference

Jemima took the creative lead for the documentary, while Rosie and Jacob played key roles in

coordinating our group. We visited Exmouth beach to gather footage and assist in cleaning up litter.

The documentary aimed to inspire viewers to act in reducing river pollution in their communities.

This was successfully done using emotive music in the background aswell as using shocking statistics

in the voice over. After visiting Exmouth, Rosie went on to visit other beaches and said the state of

them were far worse . Thus, giving us more motivation to continue this project after we finish the

module where we aim to go do beach clear ups on other beaches. In terms of logistics for the

documentary we found that using an iPhone would be the most suitable way of filming footage.

Originally we had discussed hiring a camera from the university but found that the footage was of an

equal quality of the iPhone. Once we had the footage CapCut was used to edit the documentary as
well as add in the voiceovers. For future students we recommended using CapCut right from the

start, our group tried using other websites such as iMovie and it was quite longwinded and wasted

time.

To conclude the reason that Sea the Truth has been so successful is due to our collaboration as a

group, Liberman suggests that there are four requirements for there to be a positive outcome. He

says that there needs to be 'group cohesiveness, saliency, cognitive restructuring and diversity of

experience'(1997, 169) and I think this is very relevant to our group as there has only been positive

things to take away from the group. I feel it has helped me become far more organised with my work

as others are relying on my contributions and their enthusiasm motivated me to produce higher

quality work. It has also encouraged me to be more creative and compromise more given that it is a

group project rather than me solely writing an essay.

Works Cited:

Forster, Louise. “5 Podcast Script Templates for Planning Your Episodes.” Amplify by

MatchMaker.fm, 8 Nov. 2023, amplify.matchmaker.fm/podcast-script-templates.

Hartley, Peter. 1997. Groups can help- Group Communication. London and New York: Routledge,

pp.161-174 .

Hartley, Peter and Mark Dawson. 2010. Success in Groupwork. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

McHugh, S. (2022). The Power of Podcasting: Telling stories through sound. Columbia University

Press.