British Heart Foundation Run

Heart Runners

Mercedes
When I found out that my dad died from Coronary Heart Disease, I automatically wanted to help others who are suffering from the same disease. I started to do some research online and came across an event held by the British Heart Foundation,  it was to run 5km at the Tower of London and raise as much money as possible. I signed up for this for a fee of £13 and then created my online dontation page- www.justgiving.com/MercedesWrighton93. After the race it made me feel really good about myself that I was raising money to help others and I find this to be a good coping mechanism.          

                                                                      Jamie-Lee 
Due to working alongside with Mercedes for this project and being a close friend of hers I wanted to be supportive, so by doing so i also joined up for the BHF 5km run. On the day we managed to run together around the track, and this also made me feel good about myself as I was doing something that would raise money to help people suffering with this problem. 

Donating to a good cause

Creating this donation page meant that we could raise as much money as

 possible for our chosen charity we set a target of £500, we shared the link on

  our social media pages to get as many donations as possible, we only ended up making half of our target which didn't matter as everything helps, and £250 can be a great help to our chosen charity.

Final poster 2

Final Poster 1

Our project is about giving advice and also about us learning about ways of coping. This poster is quite basic due to the topic being serious and trying to advise others.


This poster gives positive words and ways of dealing with difficult situations, adding our blog URL at the bottom just also allows people to visit it to and see how we have created this project and to also show others how we cope.  

Final Poster 2 progess

Here we have used our originally image of our letters placed on grass and added animated images of ways you can couple for example, talking to people, exercising and mediation. 

Poster process

The process of making our final poster, we decided to use one of the images that we took while taking a stroll along the River Thames. Firstly, we edited the image by matching 16 colours which were shown to get it the effect that it has. Then we decided to test out different fonts, choosing the correct font for our topic that we are trying to get across to people is important as we want people to take this seriously. Adding positive strategies that people should try  as these are the ones that we have found to be the best ways to cope with difficult situations. For the colours of the text on our poster we went for the eye drop tool and picked colours that where on our image to make it all connect and a colour scheme of grey, black, blue and orange.

Font Ideas

Here are some font designs that we downloaded from http://www.dafont.com, We went for a bubbly font at first to make it catchy to the eye but then we realised  that it needed to be a little bit more smarter looking due to our topic being very serious and dealing with personal problems. The font that we thought was most appropriate and decided that we would use on our poster was 'Caviar Dreams'. 

Coping Strategy- Taking a afternoon walk

Our afternoon stroll along the River Thames, was a chance to try out a new strategy of trying to cope our own personal issues. This was a chance for us to have a chat about problems that we were worrying ourselves about and by getting fresh air, plus exercise. Seeing such pretty views and capturing them in these photography's makes us also realise what a beautiful country we live in and how lucky we are to live so close to these landscapes. We both also felt that taking a walk was a good strategy to us as we both had a friend to talk to while doing it and our minds drifted away from all the worry, we were both supportive and have continued this as a new hobby to do once a week.

How I cope- Mercedes

I have a number of ways of coping my main one is keeping busy, but also remembering the person in a certain way.  I like to light a candle on special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas' and Fathers day.  When I am doing something like a test or something where I need a little extra luck I always wear my dads earrings as a good luck charm and it is also very comforting.  Lastly, as a coping mechanism for myself and my family is a bench, we bought a bench shortly after our dad passed which is somewhere we can go to vent to and share our problems.

Ways I cope- Mercedes

I find one of the best ways to cope for myself is to keep busy and do things.  I find cleaning highly therapeutic and keeps my mind busy from thinking about certain things. On a Saturday when my mum is at work I clean the whole house, upstairs and downstairs,I find it the best coping method for me. 

Being Creative with the Letters

Putting the letters against a brick wall, changing the filter when taking the pictures to make the letters look brighter.

Lastly, we put our letters on the stairs going up to represent positivity.

Being Creative with the Letters

We came up with the idea of going out and taking pictures of our letters around natural habitats. Firstly we went up the river and displayed our letters on each step in order to get a modern day background in it. 

Secondly, we used a land of grass to display our letters to get a more natured affect to our picture, we also try to place them in a large tree but we felt this didn't work as one of us had to hold some of the letters as they keep falling.

Being Creative with the letters

Being Creative with the Letters

We decided to get photos of us with our hand made letters in order to express ourselves whilst also having fine as we are trying to create a positive campaign. 

Poster Idea 2

 Here are three poster designs using the same image, but with the text 'routine' positioned in different places. This idea was discovered through Jamie-Lee's OCD that she is having to deal with on a daily basis, everything has to be neat and in order. We have tested out different font colours to see which one stood out the most, our final one is going to be the the bottom left hand one with the multi-coloured letters in order for the word routine to stand out. 

Poster Idea 1

Together we created this poster using illustrator we have used words that we most think that people suffer with who need to use coping strategies to get through life.  The clouds in the background represent happiness and positivity.  

                             

Questionnaire Result

Question 7:

I find, when a lot of people are upset they tend to hide it from others, therefore by asking this question and the answers are anonymous people can be a bit more open and honest with their answers. The majority of the answers were that they know when they are upset and they try to deal with it themselves.

Questionnaire Result

Question 8:
The answers for this question had a mixture of responses over half of the people who answered feel that they are the cause of their own problems and a smart amount at 23.53% of people blame others for their problems.

Questionnaire Results

Question 6:
By having this particular question was to also help us in a way to see how others would cope through difficult times. We did not receive the same responses throughout, the answers varied from ' I am strong' to 'by staying positive.'