“We have a lot of words to describe the things that define us.”
“They give us dimension, they give us character, they give us depth.”
“The You Can Play message is hope.”
When the Vikings of Portland State’s campus rec program set out to make a You Can Play video, they asked their students and staff to talk about You Can Play, diversity and sportsmanship and it was all unscripted.
“We worked collaboratively with a creative team at Portland State called Co Creative to share our overarching values of inclusion, equity and play,” said marketing and outreach coordinator Clara Fisher Johnson. “Our main objective was to highlight inclusion in sports and recreation, particularly for our LGBTQ community and demonstrate that we invite, encourage, and support our entire campus to play in whatever ways are meaningful and possible for them. We focused on our staff in the video because we really wanted to emphasize that we collectively create a safe and welcoming environment for every person on our campus. To get the most authentic point of views from our our staff, we conducted unscripted interviews and asked them to reflect on what the You Can Play message means to them. It was also important to share the ways in which we play both in and outside of the Rec Center as individuals.”
The result is a video that shows the Vikings support diversity, and they represent it from a variety of backgrounds, ethnicities and sexual orientations. And, the perspectives come from perspectives those who hike, swim, practice yoga and play wheelchair basketball, among others.
“When people come in and see what they are, that is magic.”