Keep Freedom Unlocked
Keep Freedom Unlocked is a campaign dedicated to educating people about the freedoms won after the revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It is supported by the Democracy Council, a global organisation advocating for freedom, human rights, equal opportunities and public participation.
Freedom needs protection.
With authoritarian leaders threatening journalists, attacking minorities, undermining peoples privacy, the right to peaceful protest and spreading misinformation, the Democracy Council needed to show that they were a voice for the people and show that democracy is delicate and needs communities to educate, engage and support each other to help stop the erosion of democratic rights and values. We were tasked with coming up with a simple branded campaign that would help to create an awareness of the freedoms that were hard won by those in the past and that these freedoms are under threat once more.
Historically significant, a key became a symbol of freedom.
The Keep Freedom Unlocked brand was inspired by grass roots movements.
Thirty years since the revolutions of 1989.
While democracy has it’s flaws, and has been a work in progress, we wanted to highlight that since the revolutions of 1989 there has been 30 years of freedom. Freedom to vote in free elections; to love who we want; to protest without fear; to read books, watch films and listen to music without censorship; to talk to whoever — wherever and whenever we like.
Our campaign took inspiration from the protests during the Velvet Revolution. During the Velvet Revolution, keys were jangled by protesters as show of solidarity against oppression and to tell the occupying force to go home. We recaptured the unifying and defiant spirit of ‘89 by adopting the powerful symbol of the key to represent a symbol of freedom, just as the Extinction Rebellion hourglass has become a powerful symbol of ecological resistance.
We partnered with groups and individuals who are fighting for freedoms now, and those that had experienced the pre-89 world, telling their amazing stories from an East German swimmer who swam 22 kilometres across the Baltic Sea to reach freedom, to a Salesian priest who had to flee their homeland and return 40 years later once communism had fallen.