Black Canadians have been making important contributions to Canada’s history for over 400 years, yet their stories are not included in our education curriculum.

The omission of Black people has big impact because history sets the context for our world as we understand it today. When we omit their presence and contributions, we fail to see them as part of our collective heritage and continue to see them as “other” in today’s world.

This issue is not on the radar of Ontario’s educators. It’s not on the roadmap or priorities for education mandates for the foreseeable future, so (via our own idea) our objective was to get Ontario education policymakers to see the lack of Black history education as an issue they should be alarmed by, inciting them to take action to address immediately.

Seeing is believing, so we set out to find a visual way to demonstrate just how skewed our history curriculum is, starting with the source of information: the text book. We wanted to know exactly how much of the current Grade 8 text book included the stories of Black people. Out of the 255 pages, only 13 had a mention.

We wanted our audience to feel what it’s like to have their history omitted, so we redacted everything except the stories of Black people as a stark comparison for our audience: to see their own history "blacked out", while highlighting just how little information remained. A visual representation of the disparity between the two that is so obvious and jarring, it makes the issue undeniable.

The result is #BlackedOutHistory. Not just a book, but a movement.

We spoke directly to government insiders to understand how changes are made in parliament, and what gets the attention of policymakers. In our discovery we found three key ingredients for in getting policymakers to act:

1. We identified a circle of influence that ultimately push policy makers to act: the media, their constituents, their political opposition, and activist groups.

2. It helps if it’s an issue that Canadians are already passionate about (equality).

3. The message has to be easy to share, so any of these groups can pick it up and run with it quickly and effectively.

Therefore, our strategy was to create a package that was impossible for our audience to ignore but also provided them with the materials to easily share and talk about it.

Our call to action: work with our clients to recognize and include the contributions of Black people in the Ontario education curriculum.

We created packages by hand that included the “blacked out” textbooks and a personalized letter for each audience: top media outlets, educators, activist groups, members of the opposition party, and our ultimate target: the education ministers and lead politicians in power, all the way up to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Along with a strong call to action, we armed them all with an easy way to start the conversation online: the hashtag #BlackedOutHistory and a link to the PSA video we launched to support the campaign. Not only was the book itself a sharable piece of content, but we also had video to support the cause and help make the issue incredibly clear for anyone seeing it online for the first time.

The campaign was an unequivocal success. It was covered by The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Yahoo, City News, Breakfast Television, CBC, Narcity, CP24, and made the front page of the Toronto Star.

Online, the campaign earned 5.6 million impressions and had a 90% positive sentiment score.

Educators and teachers unions across Ontario requested their own copies of the Blacked Out textbook, and used it to teach students about prejudice and bias.

Nielsen, the textbook publisher, began a review of its company’s policies and process for writing textbooks.

And most importantly, policymakers took notice. MPPs (Members of Provincial Parliament) shared photos of themselves posing with the blacked out textbook on social media, and MPP Jill Andrews made a speech about it in Parliament with the textbook in hand.

Finally, the opposition party began a push to change the curriculum.