Project
Us Too
Illustrated interviews designed to demystify who domestic abuse affects.
Project Purpose
This powerful 30-minute soundscape weaves together classical, electronic and experimental music with interviews from a diverse range of domestic abuse survivors who shared their personal stories.
We created Us Too to demystify societal ideas about who can be affected by – or indeed perpetrate – domestic abuse. Our hope is that self and peer-identification become more likely and people gain the help they need to move on with their lives.
Paired together with Make Do and Mend, we continue to use it to raise understanding of domestic abuse in professional training and community awareness-raising activity.
Project outcomes
Raising Awareness
Us Too extended people’s awareness of who can be at risk of domestic abuse, with a community worker telling us “I never thought it could happen to the elderly,” whilst a young autistic person took a copy of our book away after hearing the soundscape, highlighting how seeing oneself represented can support self-identification of risks & how to keep oneself safe.
Community
Sharing the Us Too clips in our lockdown campaign in a community Facebook group led to someone sending a private message to the group leader recognising they were affected & asking for details of specialist support.
Training
When we updated our Demystifying Domestic Abuse training to incorporate Us Too and trialled this with VCSE-sector professionals: 100% reported having enhanced their understanding of the signs, manifestations and underlying dynamic of domestic abuse. 88% reported having expanded their perception of who can experience – and perpetrate – domestic abuse.
Bringing the project to life
Inspiration and installation
Sharing Make Do and Mend revealed the class-based assumptions many still hold about who domestic abuse affects, inspiring us to collect diverse testimonies to bust such myths. Co-produced with researcher Ros Walling-Wefelmeyer, artist Rupert Philbrick and The Cobweb Orchestra, Us Too was installed alongside The Power and The Virtue: Guido Reni’s Death of Lucretia in The Bowes Museum.
The co-production process
Artist Lizzie Lovejoy created illustrations inspired by the survivor interviews to bring the testimonies to life in our informational resource book. We incorporated this new artistic content into our Demystifying Domestic Abuse training to further extend professional understanding. We ran engagement workshops with Daisy Arts and Woodhouse Close Church and Community Centre and a live concert and panel talk at St Aidan’s College – Durham University.
Lockdown campaign
When Covid-19 hit, and government messaging advised people they were safer at home, we created a digital campaign, combining short Us Too clips with Lizzie Lovejoy’s beautiful illustrations, to highlight that domestic abuse survivors were not safer at home and encourage neighbours to look out for one another.
Book our Demystifying Domestic Abuse workplace training to help you meet your duty of care to affected staff.
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Our
Impact
Related Materials
Us Too
Buy our Us Too informational resource book to support learning around the diversity of people affected by – and who may perpetrate – domestic abuse.
Find out more
Postcards
Buy a lovely set of postcards compiling illustrations by Lizzie Lovejoy, inspired by the testimony of our diverse survivors.
Find out more