BIG PHARMAFFIA

First ideas:
Childrens book
Boardgame
levensweg
life size people
live game, choices, time, money

References:
never let me go (book)
de grote donor show BNN 2007 (tv program)
NPO yes we can (TV program)

idea card/computergame:
-asking the right questions
-looking at what kind of decision-making power people have

narrow down specific experience
fast track in the health care system
for example: cancer, pregnant

biases: women, trans, immigrant and mental health
you're treated different

strike in health care Rotterdam, can not stop working so decide to give healthcare for free instead.

Where to start?
Talk to people in health care and see what their personal experiences are. Which would bring us primary sources. Also look at our own experiences in health care.

Feedback with Lila
Start thinking of visual ways to present the project, and also think about the audience; is it passive or engaged?

play with performance

Nijntje, a famous childrens book from the netherlands

Levensweg

A game which is basically the play of an entire lifecycle of an average civilian. You can get married, which will cost you x amount of money, you can buy a house and get kids etc. etc.

We could rework this same concept towards healthcare. Imagine the whole cycle being the duration of your sick/hospitalized time. And you need to make decisions, such as choose the qualified doctor which will cost you x amount of money, or use a homeopathic method.

examples of double meanings in childrens shows or books (double entendres):

This childrens book idea would support our satire approach and would of course be meant for adults. But it is to show these adults that we don’t seem to be able to reach them normally so we felt the need to simplify the message, maybe even oversimplify.

In dutch we have a word for this as well: Jip & Janneke taal.
"the language of jip and janneke, which is a childrens book made by Annie M.G. Schmidt

WAY OF PRESENTING/DELIVERY

Alongside bringing out our children's book, we feel it would be interesting to go beyond this to support our idea.

To fortify our concept it would be interesting to make a video of the presentation. Since we have a childrens book which is mostly meant for adults, yet in a childish way it would be interesting to have a video of a person reading the book out loud as if to a group of children in the reading corner of the library. Then when the camera slowly zooms out you would see a group of adults listening with full attention. We could exaggerate the aim for the medical world by having few people wear medical clothing or suits.

RESEARCH ON CHILDRENS BOOKS

With this project we want to start the conversation surrounding the problems within the healthcare system. We are focussing specifically on the ‘big pharma’; an industry that is supposed to be structured to cure people from their diseases and intended to make humanity healthy. A place where people work day and night to develop new medicine for the most horrific illnesses, trying to get treatments available all over the world to heal as many people as possible. An industry spreading the knowledge gained by thorough research on our well-being to other specialists - all working toward this one purpose; making people better. Right?
You could question if everyone in the industry has this same intention when there are profits made that go up to 93.7 billion dollars (Dunleavy, 2022). Profits that are gained at the expense of peoples suffering. Where marketing strategies are created to increase sales, information is being withheld form the public and there is no responsibility taken when difficulties appear. The Pharmaceutical industry lost sight of the main intention and became so distant from the people involved that they treat it like any other business, working with different hidden agendas.
We want to shed light on the ethical part of the industries; make people aware of the intentions of companies that are not so nice to look at. The key concerns we want to address are the displacement of responsibility, the displacement of trust, and the lack of transparency within the healthcare system. We want to achieve this goal by creating a children’s book aimed at adults, using absurdity and humor. We want to create a story that raises questions about the Healthcare system and makes people form their own critical opinion on what to consider, believe and do in terms of getting health care and think about their own role in the system of healthcare.