Project
Honour Shame
A work-in-progress performance, authored by many women, tackling taboos surrounding shame and honour.
This performance used dance, poetry and visual arts to unpick attitudes and behaviours surrounding shame and honour in relation to women’s bodies and sexuality, weaving together common threads across different cultures.
With Honour Shame, we sought to bring attention to women’s common experience of judgement in relation to their bodies and sexuality. We explored how attitudes of shame and honour manifest across different cultures. The resulting artworks created a space for reflection about how we can empower and support women to define how they believe their bodies and sexuality should be treated and respected.
Project outcomes
Raised awareness of shared experiences
We aimed to raise awareness of women’s common experience across cultures.
Engaged and empowered
That our piece engaged young white British women referencing a media diet of body-shaming & slut-shaming at the same time as empowering refugees of African origin to engage in conversation about Female Genital Mutilation shows we were able to create the desired impact with our work-in-progress piece.
Greater appreciation for similarities of experience
All respondents answered that the piece drew out similarities between their experiences (or those of women & girls in their life) & those of women & girls from other cultures.
Altered perceptions
The majority felt that the piece had changed how they think about women & girls or themselves.
Bringing the project to life
Creative expression and conversation
We ran workshops with four diverse women’s groups across the North East, which invited creative expression via participative arts processes, drawn from the artistic team’s backgrounds in dance, poetry, painting and installation art. This engagement was coordinated by choreographer Alys North and supported by poet Chris Robinson.
Choreography and curation
These conversations shaped a work-in-progress dance piece, choreographed by Alys North, that included a visual arts installation by Polly Turner & spoken word collection by Chris Robinson. This combined-arts performance was shared at Dance City for our R&D participants and a youth audience from Sunderland University, Gateshead College & Bishop Auckland College.
Capturing the learning potential
After a pause in which other areas of our work took precedence, we picked up the theme of sexual attitudes and behaviours with our Let’s Talk About Sex project in 2021. This led to an impactful art-filled resource – What’s All the Fuss About? – which we have adapted into an educator toolkit, incorporating the Honour Shame poetry and visual artwork as further stimulus for reflection.
Our
Impact
Related Materials
What Would You Do?
Purchase a digital or hard copy of our Sexting-themed educator toolkit What Would You Do? This comes with a short film co-created with young people and can be used to develop understanding around the laws, risks and consequences associated with sending intimate images.
Find out more