Chemistry's "Big Facts Small Acts" -- Making a Difference, on a Tight Budget

ANA: What was the motivation behind Big Facts Small Acts and the mural project?

Breen: The community of Southwest Atlanta was the motivation. Sheri Scott, a friend and colleague, recognized very quickly that public health advice was not having an impact in her community and asked for our help in finding a different way to reach out to the community, since existing efforts were falling on deaf ears.

ANA: What did you see as the biggest challenges when you were first brainstorming?

Breen: There were a lot of challenges. We had to act fast because the pandemic wasn't going to wait for us to perfect our messages. We also didn't have a lot of money to work with. Sheri literally started the non-profit agency Big Facts Small Acts with her $600 stimulus check. The real challenge, though, was how to break down the barriers between our community and the message. There is a long history of mistrust between the Black community and government, especially as it relates to the medical community. When you think of the government trying to impart a vaccination or a social distancing message, your mind instantly goes to the Tuskegee Experiments, but there's a long history of medical abuses toward the Black community. Understanding this, we couldn't just reiterate what the CDC had said or wheel out a celebrity. Others were already trying that, but there was a trust barrier those messages couldn't overcome.

ANA: You've done street art projects in the past, was this the first idea you had?

Breen: Actually, no. Our first idea was around music. Atlanta has a ton of amazing musicians, especially in the Hip Hop scene. We thought partnering with those artists to remake iconic covers of their albums to include masks could be a great way to get the message out, especially to the younger audiences. But there were obstacles with this approach and in the end, it would not have had the grass-roots impact we were looking for. There were also other social dynamics colliding at the same time. We weren't just dealing with the politicization of the pandemic and masks, the country was confronted with the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, so in that collective moment we felt that it was important that our message came from the community as a grassroots rallying cry. It was critical that this was not perceived as manufactured. We kept kicking around ideas and then realized that we could take the same concept and apply it to street art. We've worked with a number of incredible muralists and Atlanta is a hub for that as well. Street artists really are political activists and have a certain level of inherent credibility that you just can't fake.

ANA: What input did the artists have on the project?

Breen: They were extremely important in helping us define our message and build out our concept. Fabian Williams, especially, was integral to the project. He's a brilliant artist who actually has a background in advertising but he's also a political activist and powerful voice in the community. He looked at what we were trying to do from a different perspective and felt strongly that the message behind the push to wear masks really needed to feel positive and come from a place of belonging to something bigger than oneself. For the first message on the first mask, he insisted on the headline being "We will survive." And that insight really helped fuel the entire campaign.

ANA: So, you put masks on murals?

Breen: Yes. We tried to figure out how we could change the murals to have a message without, obviously, permanently altering them in any way. We came up with the idea of covering dozens of iconic pieces of highly visible street art throughout the community in a show of solidarity. Some of the murals are massive, 50-foot-tall iconic images woven into the fabric of the community. People drive by them every day. It was striking. We felt it wasn't necessarily our job to make a tutorial on how to social distance or why to wear a mask. We just wanted to make the act of wearing a mask be viewed as something the community could get behind.

ANA: What lessons did you learn from this project that you will take with you?

Breen: Thinking back, there are two. The first is that sometimes you have to be okay with building the plane while you're flying it. I think that's the biggest lesson really. In some ways we reverse-engineered this project. We identified the problem, thought of a potential solution, made it happen, and then got funding for it. And I know that's not always possible, but the traditional route of seeking funding, focus groups, testing, and then doing wasn't going to work. My other takeaway is about collaboration. And honestly that is a lesson I have learned over the years as I have become part of Atlanta's creative community which is predominately driven by Black creators. There is so much talent and a refreshing spirit of collaboration to make things for the greater good and the success of all. I think that is something our industry can learn from. I know it is a lesson I try to apply to my agency every day. You really don't know how great something can be until you try to get everyone to contribute.

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