Right now in America, over 80% of schools face defunding, with art often the first subject to go. It's one of the main reasons why in Kindergarten, 80% of kids rank high in creativity but by second grade it drops to 10%—and by high school it's almost non-existent. This creative crisis inspired LIFEWTR, a brand that believes "art is as essential to life as water", to take action through its campaign to #BringArtBackToSchools.
Instead of telling people how students are losing their creative abilities, we showed it with an emotive social experiment that revealed this sharp decline in creativity as early as second grade. This online film announced our mission to put art back in the hands of 1 million students, inviting people to raise their voice and help #BringArtBackToSchools.
Through partnerships with Scholastic and National Arts Education Association, we created LIFEWTR classroom programs, art kits and live workshops designed to help students in schools that have lost art programs.
LIFEWTR is a purpose-driven brand constantly trying to find new ways to live its core belief: that art is as essential to life as water. It's the first brand to turn water bottles into a canvas for new art from emerging artists. With #BringArtBackToSchools, LIFEWTR turned the focus to the future of arts in our society with the "Art in Education" bottle series that illuminated the arts education crisis by partnering with three artists whose exposure to art in school was critical in discovering their own path in life.
With this work, LIFEWTR has injected action and purpose into the bottled water category, which has historically traded on function. They became an arts education provider through multiple initiatives and committed to put art back in the hands of 1 million students. Art lesson programs and kits were developed with Scholastic. The campaign was furthered by partnering with Lucy Liu, an outspoken arts advocate, who visited schools to provide workshops and mentoring sessions.
Since the campaign's launch, our #BringArtBackToSchools online film has been viewed over 20MM times on YouTube alone, with a total of over 25MM views including Twitter and ATTN. Despite a 3 minute length and skippable format, more than half of our viewers have stayed to the viewing threshold 2-3 times higher than the standard benchmark.
Our message struck a chord with our audience, culminating in thousands of comments and shares, generating more exposure for the lack of arts education in schools. As a result of our efforts, we tallied at least 300 personal stories about the impact of arts education on our content and other social mediums. Additionally, publications picked up the the story and spread the impact to a total of 370MM earned impressions.
