Think Food Bank campaign takes on food poverty with guerrilla stickers

Think Food Bank is a personal project by designers Maisie Benson and Holly Kielty that sets out to support food banks this winter, straight from the supermarket shelves. The duo has created a set of illustrated stickers with an array of icons inspiring shoppers to buy twice in order to donate to food banks, and adapted in colour scheme to blend with each supermarket’s own branding.

In a tweet, Benson, a senior designer at B&B Studio, says she collaborated with Holly Kielty, creative strategy director at Design Bridge, to support food banks that are “already under huge strain”. She also cites statistics from charity The Trussell Trust that predicts a 61% increase in demand over the winter, meaning “now’s the time for us to act” she states.

The stickers boast catchy slogans related to the food items they depict; for example a heart shaped jam on toast emblazoned with “spread the love,” a bowl of rice saying “be nice, buy rice twice” and the piece de resistance “don’t forgetti, donate spaghetti”. There’s also more general calls to action such as “buy one bank one” on a hand gesturing a peace sign, and a lightbulb where the tungsten coil takes the form of a group of people, stating simply “think food bank”.

Benson continues that the set of stickers was created “to remind shoppers at shelf to pop extra items in their basket for food banks” and that the campaign is, importantly, guerrilla style and not officially in conjunction with any stores, but aims to “get supermarkets to take action. This benefits supermarkets from extra sales, and more importantly, adds much needed donations to food banks”. The duo are also enlisting help from individuals; to offer support, just contact the designers and cover the cost of postage and they will send the stickers to you, so you can get sticking. She adds that “if stickering isn’t for you, you can help our cause by donating to the Trussell Trust”.

The project joins a host of recent campaigns to aid widespread and worsening food poverty in Britain as a result of the pandemic. One of the best known is being led by footballer and activist Marcus Rashford, who has been petitioning the government to demand the expansion of the free school meals program into school holidays, and leading a campaign supported by local charities and businesses to pledge free meals for children in food poverty around the UK.