We are thrilled to announce you can now access the Active Images toolkit and website! Continue reading to discover why TaAF and Active Lancashire have developed this fantastic free image library.
During the pandemic, Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care System (ICS) asked whether we and Active Lancashire could help deliver a social media campaign. The campaign was to encourage vulnerable people to protect themselves against winter illnesses and reduce their risk of Covid.
A key element of the campaign was to raise awareness of how being more active can help improve your health and wellbeing. To achieve this we knew it was important to use authentic and relatable images that would be more likely to capture people’s attention. In addition, we could only show the activities people were allowed and encouraged to do as per the Government’s COVID advice at the time. So, we were looking for images of people being active outdoors.
We struggled to find images that represented the various demographics of our place and the majority of images we found were of organised team sports or indoors. When we asked our partners if they could help, we discovered that we all experienced the same challenge.
This presented us with a problem as the success of any social media campaign is largely dependent on using appropriate images for the message.
Finding an alternative solution
The ICS informed us that their most successful Covid messages were those delivered by local health care professionals and well known community leaders.
Using this insight and with support from the CCG, TaAF contacted several GPs asking them to share images of themselves being active and a short statement of why being active is important to them. Active Lancashire created the campaign assets which were than shared by the CCGs, local councils, health care organisations and the voluntary sector across Pennine Lancashire.
You can view the impact of the ‘Let Do It for’ campaign in East Lancashire by downloading the PDF report here.
Finding a long term solution
Both TaAF and Active Lancashire felt it would be an excellent investment to create a shared image library resource for us and our partners to use. We are delighted to announce that the Active Images toolkit and website are now live.
We intend to expand the range of images and evolve based on need. We welcome any feedback you may have to improve this resource and suggestions on images you’d like us to capture in future photoshoots. Please get in touch with us by clicking here.