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Upcoming event: Weaving Stories of Peer Sexual Abuse 

    Insights from a youth co-created animation project

    Weaving Stories is a pilot animation project developed by County-Durham arts education company, Changing Relations, and funded via the VISION research consortium through the Small Projects Fund.

    The animation was co-produced with Secondary-aged students, survivors of peer sexual abuse, and an artistic team, to amplify young people’s voices on the theme of unwanted sexual behaviour and the culture that enables it. The students and young survivors shaped every aspect of the animation.

    An interdisciplinary Steering Group of academic researchers, creative practitioners, and child protection and sexual violence specialists from a North East school and Rape Crisis centre, were also involved in the project.

    With this animation and associated school based learning programme, Changing Relations seeks to influence knowledge, behaviour, and institutional change using the impactful animation as stimulus for reflection. Following this pilot project, VISION and Changing Relations have organised a one-hour webinar for UK policymakers and practitioners to:

    • Watch the co-created animation (20 minutes)
    • Hear young people’s perspectives on the key themes and co-production approach
    • Explore the animation’s potential impact on school cultures, disclosure, help-seeking, and victim-blaming attitudes
    • Engage in academic-informed analysis of trauma-informed safeguarding and youth-centred approaches to sexual violence prevention
    • Gain practical insights on using creative participatory approaches to engage young people in conversations about violence and abuse
    • Consider actionable recommendations for policy and practice
    • Contribute your reflections

    This webinar will be of interest to a wide range of professionals who work with adolescents and / or in violence-prevention. Educators, social workers, academics, and third sector, central and local government policy analysts and researchers in particular may be interested.

    There are two dates providing the option to choose between a more practice or policy oriented session:

    • Thursday 8th May 1-2pm for policymakers
    • Wednesday 14th May 3-4pm for practitioners

    Speakers and facilitators

    • Lisa Davis, Managing Director, Changing Relations
    • Kate Gorman, Creative Producer and Artistic Director, Changing Relations
    • Kimberly Cullen, Knowledge Exchange Manager, UKPRP VISION research consortium, City St George’s UoL

    Webinar registration

    To register for free for either the 8th or 14th of May, please visit our page on Ticket Tailor.

    The webinar will be on Microsoft Teams and you will receive the link on the day you choose to attend.

    For further information, please contact VISION_Management_Team@citystgeorges.ac.uk

    United to End Violence Against Women and Girls: An Online Animated Campaign  

      Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a pressing issue in Iran, a Middle Eastern country marked by its patriarchal structure and systematic and pervasive gender discrimination. Educational programmes addressing this issue are scarce, and cultural barriers often hinder open discussion. The United to End Violence Against Women and Girls campaign aims to break this silence through a series of animated videos in Farsi and English and images designed to inform public discourse and to empower victims to seek support.

       The United to End Violence Against Women and Girls project was led by VISION researchers Ladan Hashemi and Sally McManus, in collaboration with colleagues from other UK universities including the University of Bristol, Goldsmiths University, Animation Research Centre at the University for the Creative Arts, and Leeds Beckett University. 

      They worked with an animation production team in Iran, a social media advisor, and two advisory groups. The advisory groups were Mehre Shams Afarid, an Iran-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), and IKWRO, a London-based charity providing services to women victims of violence from the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region—to incorporate culturally specific insights.

      Although the project initially focused on Iran, engaging with the UK-based NGO revealed an interest in extending its reach. As a result, English subtitles were added to make the animations accessible to a wider audience. This collaboration helped the content resonate with audiences both in Iran and within the global diaspora community, particularly those from the MENA region.

      The animations are grounded in evidence from a survey of 453 women in Iran, which explored the manifestation of various forms of VAWG in Iran and women’s perspectives on how to eliminate it. The survey was designed by Fatima Babakhani, CEO of Mehre Shams Afarid.

      Key findings from participants’ open-ended responses to the survey showed that, despite structural inequalities and deeply ingrained societal, cultural, and religious norms that perpetuate VAWG, change is possible through education and legal reforms.

      As one survey participant noted: “Unfortunately, many still don’t understand what violence truly is. Raising awareness is the solution.”

      The first four United to End Violence Against Women and Girls campaign animations focus on coercive control, economic abuse, technology-facilitated abuse, and active bystander interventions, with two more animations in development.

      With guidance from an Iranian social media advisor, a digital strategy was developed to maximise the campaign’s impact. Instagram was chosen as the primary distribution platform, as it is the most widely used social media platform in Iran, with over 47 million users. The animations are also shared on YouTube to further extend the campaign’s reach.

      Influencers and women’s rights activists with followings from thousands to millions were partnered with to amplify the campaign’s reach. The online campaign officially launched 25th November, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls.

      By leveraging evidence-based content and strategic partnerships, we hope to spark meaningful conversations and drive change across Iran and the diaspora communities from the MENA region.

      Join us in raising awareness and advocating for change. Please follow and share the campaign links on your social media to help spread the message.

      Link to Instagram page

      Link to YouTube channel

      This project was funded by City St George’s, University of London Higher Education Impact Fund (HEIF) Knowledge Exchange and by the UKPRP VISION research consortium.

      For further information, please contact Ladan at ladan.hashemi@city.ac.uk

      The story so far: Co-production in Lambeth

        By Elizabeth Cook, Senior Lecturer in Criminology & Sociology at City St George’s, University of London

        As the VISION consortium approaches the end of its third year, work continues on consolidating the learning from various large datasets in crime and justice, health, and specialist services.

        What we know is that these datasets are structured in different ways, collected by different agencies, and curated for quite different purposes. They represent particular ways of knowing about violence and abuse: they can help to identify patterns (e.g., what determines whether victim-survivors of sexual violence and abuse access support), prevalence (e.g., of workplace bullying and harassment), trends over time, and associations (e.g., between intimate partner violence, suicidality, and self-harm). However, we also know that large datasets struggle to capture the complex, and sometimes messy, realities of violence and abuse experienced by communities, especially those that are marginalised and minoritised.

        Peer action research in Lambeth

        In Lambeth, working in collaboration with peer researchers has made visible the evidence gaps that emerge at the intersection of multiple systems of inequality, including racism and misogyny.

        We are lucky to be partnered with Lambeth Peer Action Collective (LPAC), High Trees and Partisan as part of a peer action research project. The aim of the project is to explore the role that trusted adults and trusted spaces can play in protecting young people from exposure to violence. Currently, there are 11 peer researchers that work as part of the LPAC: a collective of young people and youth organisations campaigning for change in their community. They are supported by High Trees, a Community Development Trust in Tulse Hill, eight partner youth organisations, and Partisan, a Black-led Community Interest Company providing culturally sensitive mental health support.

        What has been achieved so far?

        The project builds upon research conducted by the previous cohort of LPAC researchers conducted between December 2021 and August 2022. This project identified the impacts of violence on young people in Lambeth and the structural conditions of poverty, housing, education, urban regeneration, and public safety that were experienced unequally across the community.

        Developing these findings further, the second cohort of peer researchers have been participating in weekly research training sessions led by High Trees and supported by VISION. The group has been learning everything they need for the next stage: from safeguarding and finances, to developing research questions, critical thinking skills, and how to evaluate research methods. This month, the LPAC researchers are getting ready to put into practice the interview skills that they have been learning each week in preparation for the next stage of the project – recruitment.

        There has been amazing progress so far – not only in forming a research question and defining key concepts, but in developing a shared space for researchers to feel like change is possible and to collaborate with others who want the same.

        What have we learned?

        There are ongoing conversations about how peer action research can work to redress the imbalance between ‘researcher’ and ‘researched.’ These conversations seem even more relevant to research on violence and abuse, where the issue of power is central to both.

        So far, the weekly sessions with peer researchers as well as our meetings with High Trees have taught us a lot about how power operates within institutions and the ways that it can be shared if there is a will to share it. This can be reflected in adequate resourcing, decision-making, access, and sharing skills and knowledge. The project has underlined the importance of respect in research: for different forms of expertise, within spaces, and within research relationships. The project has also challenged adult-centric assumptions about what we suppose that young people need to live better lives.

        As mentioned previously, this project highlights the evidence gaps that occur at the intersection of multiple inequalities. In doing so, peer action research can also shape how we utilise large datasets, recognising how different social realities are reflected within existing data (or not).

        In this sense, this collaboration has also made hyper-visible the question of: what and who is research for? As others have suggested, action research is not so much a methodology, but a way of thinking about research: it is a way of approaching a specific problem through community, participation, and curiosity. It is not necessarily driven by knowing more about something, but by wanting to change something with what you know.

        We hope that this research continues in that spirit!

        Further information

        Do check out the LPAC’s manifesto for change and their previous report!

         Photograph is copyrighted to Lambeth Peer Action Collective and not for use.