Year 11 students spent the Autumn Term in their Media and Science Lessons working with The Uncommon Collective and SknHR in an exciting cross-curriculur project which aimed to improve students understanding of diverse and inclusive advertising and production techniques as well as a better understanding of the science of inclusive beauty.

The project challenged students to think about the formulation of beauty products for skin and hair aimed at consumers from the black community as well as how to market the products to these audiences. Global Academy alongside The Uncommon Collective wanted to challenge perceptions of beauty and understand the narrative around certain identities.

Through a series of industry guests and workshops – the project aimed to develop a better understanding of representation, the value of authenticity and driving a positive narrative around all communities.

This ended up with a pitch day for the client where students presented back their ideas with one group being selected to win work experience with SknHR!

We were first introduced to the exciting idea of producing material for a company called SknHr, not only that, but we were closely linking the science work we did on our science lessons to our media work!

In our science lesson we got to do plenty of research about different types of hair, and the needs of each hair type and style. We even got to look at different strands of hair under the microscope!

Whilst we were working hard on creating our decks for the client in our media lessons, we got to make our own personalized moisturizer, during science.

Then, came the designing! After some time spent planning, we got to work making mockups for SknHr that were closely linked to the promotional strategy in our decks! And finally, came the editing, once we all had our basic building blocks in place, we polished up our presentations, ready to be presented to the client!

Kacper Polonis, Year 11

Esme Murphy in Year 11 has written an account of the project and what was involved:

In Autumn term one, Year 11 were given a live brief from a small skincare care business called ‘SknHr.’ They sell organic shea butter and coconut balms throughout London and came to us to help them to develop new marketing strategies to develop their business and grow their audience. We were even given the opportunity during the project to make our own moisturizer from organic products in small groups before having a photo shoot to take photos to ‘promote’ these products.  

SknHr wanted us to create a digital marketing strategy to push their audience further. To help us complete this task, we had to research different skin and hair types as well as competitors and their customers. I found that some of the best ways to promote beauty brands are through public displays, where you may give out free samples and monthly product features – (lotion of the month and then promote from there.) 

We also looked through their social media pages and included in our presentation PowerPoints how we can improve these pages. Some of us just wrote examples, whereas some of us made an example of what their online presence could look like. I did the second option and using Adobe Photoshop, I recreated their Instagram page but changed it so it had a consistent feed. I made sure that the news feed had an ongoing colour theme and accordant posts. I focused my marketing strategy on social media as I know that it is extremely important for small businesses to be online in able to grow their audience as most people have a strong online presence nowadays. 

When we had completed our PowerPoints and felt we were ready to present, employees from SknHr and The Uncommon Collective came in and looked through each PowerPoint 1:1 to give us individual constructive criticism. We were then able to improve our work before we submitted it and it got graded. Year 11 thoroughly enjoyed this live brief and I am proud to say that I achieved a distinction.  

Thank you SknHr and The Uncommon Collective for this live brief! 

We were given the live brief in September and given the term to think of new marketing methods as well as ways to make the business stand out more and reach new audiences. With this, we were given the opportunity to win a weeks work experience with The Uncommon Collective and even though I didn’t get this opportunity, I still thoroughly enjoyed this brief!

See below some examples of work produced by Kacper and Esme