Who Wears The Trousers
“I feel so much more comfortable being me.” – Dance City audience member
Who Wears The Trousers?
Is a new project created during lockdown #1 by working in partnership with Durham University and the college of St Hild & St Bede using original artistic content from our Stepping Out of The Box exhibition as a starting point to create a printed Zine and creative care pack that aimed to develop a greater understanding and awareness of gender inequality and open up much needed conversations to challenge thinking around gender roles, behaviour and stereotypes.
We explored with students how perceived attitudes and personal experiences of gendered behaviour, group behaviour and peer pressure could negatively impact individual wellbeing and future aspiration helping young people:
- better understand the differences of sex, gender and sexuality, and
- use creative methods to challenge thinking around gender roles and stereotypes and related ideas around leadership.
Our work on this project resulted in an animation commissioned by Hild Bede that will inform future work that the college does to support and improve social and emotional wellbeing in its students by raising awareness of gender equality.
With funding and support from County Durham Community Foundation we created an alternative version of the Zine aimed at young people aged 14+ and were able to deliver 350 creative packs for FREE to schools across County Durham in the summer term 2021. We are continuing to explore how we can develop additional resources to support schools and businesses using this content as a starting point.
If you are interested in finding out more, please get in touch via [email protected]