Dragon Cafe Opening Doors AR
Challenge: Bring the community together to support a local mental well being charity ‘The Dragon Café’ to raise funds for their activity program and increase their volunteer numbers.
Insight: An estimated 1 in 4 people have experienced a mental health problem during their lifetime, yet there is still a notable stigma surrounding openness about mental health.
A Christmas wreath on a door is a welcoming sign during the holiday season. In the same way that wreaths symbolise an open door and a warm welcome, The Dragon Café opens its arms to patrons from all backgrounds.
Solution: This festive season, GPJ and the Dragon Café (a charity for people seeking a safe space to support their mental wellbeing) partnered to create the ‘Opening Minds, Opening Doors’ campaign.
To start the campaign, GPJ ran a wreath-making workshop in late November with the patrons of the Dragon Café. As well as being a fun and creative activity, these wreaths were then used to fundraise. GPJ and Dragon Café worked with the local organisation ‘Better Bankside’ to reach out to surrounding businesses to offer them a handmade wreath to sponsor and display upon their door.
GPJ also created an AR-compatible website (ARKit provided by Apple) that allowed people to place their very own AR wreath anywhere they wanted. We removed the need for installing an app which usually discourages people and lowers the conversion rate and focused on the tools that are already available in your mobile. The AR site was visited by over 100 people who all completed the entire experience. The AR wreath helped raise awareness of the café and was a call-out for volunteers – something that the Dragon Café relies heavily on.
This campaign was the perfect example of how different organisations in the community can come together to support an important cause. The Dragon Café is integral to our community and it was a privilege to be able to join them in opening minds and opening doors in December.
