Detroit Design Students Win PETA Award for Creatively Countering Speciesism

For Immediate Release:
May 18, 2023

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

Fresh on the heels of the Young Ones Student Awards, which showcase students’ talents in creative studies, three local contestants—Kayla Matthews, Kiki Farrar, and Owen Drawbaugh from the College for Creative Studies—are being crowned winners of PETA’s Choice Awards for their video entry championing animal rights. Students were asked to create ads that challenge speciesism, the human-supremacist belief that other animals exist for our benefit.

The students’ entry, titled “No Escape,” follows a young woman into a claustrophobia-inducing elevator filled with creepy passengers. As the doors close, the woman quickly notices a terrible odor and becomes increasingly distraught when the elevator doesn’t move. Soon the other passengers close in on her, emitting frantic moos, grunts, and clucks. The video evokes the cramped conditions, filth, and terror that farmed animals are forced to live in for most of their lives. As the creators put it, “The worst 30 seconds of your day is their everyday.”

“This winning video reveals the plight of animals whose cries go unheard on farms where they’re confined so that their flesh, skin, feathers, and eggs can be stolen from them for human use,” says PETA Senior Director Danielle Katz. “With the help of these creative design students, PETA is reminding everyone to use their talents to speak out against speciesism.”

Other concepts recognized by PETA include “Every Baby Has a Mother,” “Love Is Human,” and “Lil’ Luxury Lucy” by Brigham Young University’s AdLab in Provo, Utah; “Everyone Has a Mom” by students from the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon; “All Pain Sounds the Same” by a student from the School of Visual Arts in New York; and “Animals Anonymous” by students from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

PETA’s motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear or abuse in any other way.” For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.