Director’s Blog – Lisa Charlotte Davis
So, as well as actively calling out someone’s behaviour, or reporting behaviour we think is unacceptable, we also explored options such as supporting the victim. In our Weaving Stories animation, a group of young people all went to visit the Wellbeing Officer together to provide moral support to those who had tricky experiences to share.
The image I’m sharing today is a throwback to a previous project themed around young people’s sexual attitudes and behaviours, where the lovely artist Sofia Barton was commissioned by our Student Social Action Group to create a series of images reinforcing positive relationship behaviours such as effective communication, self-care and kindness towards others.
The key illustration she created is a prompt to think about safety and the need for bystander intervention.
I have talked in a range of posts about the public behaviours that affect women’s perceptions of safety. It’s entirely normal in conversations with other women to talk about the discomfort of walking alone in the dark and to reference clutching onto your keys as a tool to use in self-defence in case of an attack.
Obviously this shouldn’t be normal. Women and girls should be able to move freely without fear of harassment or violence.
But as it is the case, it’s worth considering what we can do to support a woman or girl we see being made to feel uncomfortable in public. Can we stand by them or walk with them to discourage the unwanted attention?
There are lots of different ways we can Speak Up.
