A furloughed graphic designer has teamed up with his equestrian partner to produce a series of posters to increase public awareness of how to behave around horses.
The series, which is available as free PDFs to print, includes information on how to pass horses safely on the roads, the dangers of fireworks, awareness of livestock in the New Forest and the importance for riders of wearing high-vis.
The most popular poster of the series, which has been widely shared on social media, aims to educate the public on why they should not feed horses — a critical problem for horse owners during the recent lockdowns.
The posters have been designed by Kevin Willsher and his partner Jodie Sloane, from Christchurch in Dorset.
“Jodie owns two horses and has encountered a lot of issues with other road users when hacking round the country lanes”, Kevin told H&H. “She is a member of a lot of Facebook groups involving riding and safety and she came up with the idea of creating posters to put more awareness out there.
“Initially we started out with a poster to promote wearing high-vis and it went from there.”
Kevin said his most recent designs had been inspired by the news of deaths, colics and choke caused by walkers feeding horses in fields and were clearly meeting a demand from horse owners to make the public more aware.
“I have had 50 emails requesting PDFs of the poster today alone,” he said. “It’s good to help out and to see people appreciate the effort.”
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Kevin has also started to join forces with existing awareness campaigns and has been in touch with BHS director of safety Alan Hiscox to discuss how the posters can support the BHS’s Dead Slow messaging.
“A lady from the Pass Wide and Slow campaign also asked if I could do some work with her on social media and I am in touch with fireworks campaign groups,” he said.
“As I am on furlough from my full-time position I have a bit of time to give and it has been really rewarding. The feedback and comments and the amount of shares we’ve had has been quite overwhelming.”
PDF copies of the posters can be requested from Kevin at wilts32uk@sky.com
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