In reply to Heike: It's nice to see the complexity of the issues we faced in designing an image for the poster being grappled with; there was a distinct feeling of damned if we do and damned if we don't when going through design concepts, and as Mick Ryan suggested, designed for women is a highly sensitive issue. Like any diverse group, any effort to represent anything in one image absolutely requires distortion and/or simplification.
We rejected a woman climbing on the poster because would we have had her bouldering, sport climbing or trad climbing? Would it have been an elite climber like Shauna or just an unknown female? Something that looked hard (or inspiring as some have suggested)or easy? All of these choices would have sent out a distinct message about what the day was about or who it was for. None of which would have been accurate, as you pointed out the day is not for the elite, its for climbers that happen to be women that deals primarily with climbing based issues and some that are more pertinent to women.
Add to this that nearly all images in climbing are of someone climbing, then imagine our poster in your local climbing wall or climbing media, it would blend in and you would have to read the words to know what the day was about - Anna Stohr climbing does not say 'women's climbing' in the way Adam Ondra on another super route does not say men's climbing. Without words, they both just say climbing. As a piece of advertising media it HAS to grab your attention so it has to stand out.
The high heel was a risky cultural shortcut, we considered a chalky hand with chipped nail varnish, a handbag with climbing shoes poking out etc but this of course faces the same charge as the heel. So how does one encapsulate the notion of women climbers in a single image that is clear in what it communicates and quite inclusive?
The design team that wasn't Nick,(Steph, Naomi & Shauna) were mainly staunch feminists, (mostly Masters educated in areas related to feminism) but with an overriding inclusion principle driving their thinking and those who have decried the association of the heel with climbing seem to be unaware that they are saying to those women who choose to wear heels that they either don't belong in our exclusive heel free club or that they are in some way holding women back by choosing aesthetic over function.
As Sasha Digiulian's mum put it 'feminism is defined by strong ideas and choices not fashion.' (see the climbing works facebook page) The team were aware that by choosing any image they were taking a position, and that all positions are theoretically flawed, but a poster of a woman climbing in a climbing wall was felt to be as good as a blank one.
We knew the heel would annoy some, it was inevitable, but this was not its purpose. It was designed to say women and climbing. It said this and the explosion in ticket sales, post poster debate, indicates that many women felt it spoke to them.
The poster is out, it's final, the Symposium is currently funded (at a loss) by The Climbing Hangar as our 'grass roots' support of climbing and the development of it's culture, nearly everyone involved does it for free or tiny token amounts of covering costs money. We cannot afford to design again and reprint. WCS 2012 is decided already. So the question is about 2013, we are hoping to make it a charity and have it tour the country reaching more people. How will the climbing community help? The journey will be fraught with disagreement, it is the nature of the beast.
I am hugely grateful for everyone getting involved in this debate, it demonstrates a need for the WCS and it demonstrates the diversity of the climbing crowd which our poster could not do without being unintelligible. Stay involved, stay passionate and help us develop it into something brilliant. Want to get involved and make it better? Get in touch: ged@theclimbinghangar.com
Finally men are not allowed, just like in the youth climbing competitions adults cannot compete and in the Paralympics able bodied athletes do not compete. It is a day for a group of climbers, the groups happens to be women, deal with it. If someone wants to organise a mens climbing symposium, be my guest, I floated the idea on the back of last years uproar about the WCS poster and what suggestions did I get? They were very Daily Star shall we say.