(Un)
censored.
On Saturday 29 June, the (Un)censored campaign team comprising of eight young women presented at Lewisham Council's Safer Communities Event at Lewisham Youth Theatre, with a clear vision of their asks to improve women's safety within the borough.
Watch their presentation below:
Campaign team
Alyssa Gava
Ida Robeson
Jade Barnett
Kaya Sankar-Card
Naomi Okojie
Rachel Varma
Rofeda Bougaga
Savannah McKenzie
Co-facilitated by:
Tasneim Zyada
Cecilia Alfonso-Eaton
Manifesto
We believe it is everyone’s responsibility to be educated and raise awareness on women and people of marginalised genders’ safety and comfort, so we can all be part of a community that values them.
To support women locally is to support women globally. Support is important because it can assist women and people of marginalised genders in navigating trauma and helping them to rehabilitate their lives.
We need to raise awareness of injustice and reality, share educational resources, highlight history, signpost local services, communicate and provide insight. We need to
rapidly close the door on ignorance, open the door on empathy and understanding, be mindful of space and how you hold it.
We need to consider accessibility: more wifi and ways to connect, more childcare and financial stability, more rest.
Can we see a future where travelling to and from evening activities for women and those most vulnerable isn’t scary? Night time jobs to protect the streets; more flexible employment opportunities.
By doing so, we are able to promote a fair and just society, ensuring those pushed to the margins feel seen.
The Three Asks
More trauma-informed services that are integrated into schools and are free, accessible and tailored to different individual needs and experiences. This would be frequently reviewed to provide updated training for current and changing needs of young people.
An implemented system that collects current data on the public’s accessibility to wellbeing practices, helping build better infrastructures and programmes for the needs of different communities.
Raising awareness about what services are available for women and people of marginalised genders that have felt unsafe.
Sound Scape
The Creative Campaign team worked with Sound Artist Sofia Armella to create a soundscape compiled of recordings of their routes home or routes to a destination. Play below the piece they played at the Lewisham Safer Communities Event︎︎︎
Poetry
Life as a Womanby Jade Barnett
Sometimes I hate living life as a woman,
Because being a woman somehow makes you less than?
It’s like you can’t be superior unless you’re a man.
One minute we’re “easy” enough to be played,
Then so sexy we’re only good enough to be laid,
But never good enough to be loved or paid.
It’s so dumb.
But that’s just life as a woman,
What more can we have done?
We’ve fought for freedom and equality,
To be free from misogyny,
But will that EVER be our reality?
I hate living life as a woman.
Afraid to walk alone at night,
Clutching keys, strong, just in case of a fight.
Never reporting sexual assaults,
Fearing we’ll be painted as the faults.
Asked about our clothes, as if that justifies
Being shamed and slathered in lies.
Sh*t, man.
I hate living life as a woman.
Being told we need to teach our girls to be better
When we actually, need to teach our boys to love better, to be better
And to understand what respect truly demands.
How do you expect change in a system that blames us for being women?
We were never set up to survive, yet we too deserve to be alive.
But then I remember why I love being a woman.
The beauty each of us holds can’t be described,
We go through pain each and every month and still rise.
We carry babies for months and still look like queens of the skies.
We create homes that are destined to thrive and act like everything is alright
When really we all want to take a break and just be alive…
I hate & I love life as a woman
But I just wish, others would see the importance of our silent cries,
The strength in our smiles,
The power in our sighs.
Recognise the burdens we shoulder with grace,
And honour the battles we fight in our place.
For we are the lifeblood that keeps the world turning,
Our spirits undaunted & forever yearning,
We too deserve love and affection,
Because after all women are imperfect perfections.
Untitled
by Rachel Varma
Feel shame,
feel shame for the bright lights you dim each day with your ideologies and typologies.
I am a bright light but you make me dim,
masking my bursting,
providing and soulful energy just to appear woman like, subconsciously dumbing myself down when I know I’m smart, the young me is crying tears of a stolen identity because of you.
Walking down the street, 15 years of age having men tell me what they want to do to me,
looking at me with hunger and hostility in their eyes.
Leaving scars like souvenirs on my mind,
each from a different experience,
a different day,
a different man.
How do you expect this not a affect a girl growing up?
Feeling an object so you begin treating yourself as one,
the concept of self objectification.
Then consequently and most definitely not surprisingly THIS concept is the specific point that triggers society the most,
a woman’s response to her own trauma,
women’s responses to their own trauma and not the systems and people that gave them it.
“She wants attention”, “sk*t”, “h*e.”
No, maybe she’s reacting to her trauma.
Maybe she’s been given the wrong attention all her life from every institution or man that’s meant to protect and make her feel safe,
so subsequently she equates the amount of that attention she receivesto her own worth and self esteem.
Why is your outrage not with the systems and the men that continue this cycle and further perpetuate these views,
why is it with the women, the victims ?
Especially the women who were never protected from the darkest parts of society.
Feel shame. Feel shame for the bright lights you dim each day with your ideologies and typologies
The Summer 2024 (Un)Censored. creative campaign cohort and The Body Remembers show were supported by Arts Council England.
Photography
As part of the (Un)censored Creative Campaign, Rachel Varma captured photos of different women in South London:
"My motivation behind these images was the idea of being seen and celebrated, I wanted to catch each woman in her element and allow her the power to be seen for simply who she was, no filter, no editing, no censoring, just her and the beautiful energy she carries by just being her."
Rachel Varma is a Photographer from South London with a passion for storytelling and capturing the raw and profound moments within our human condition, the moments that people tend to overlook or pass by without reflection. Through my art, Rachel shows the raw beauty within different realities, highlighting injustice and to bring about change and contemplation.
Photography by Rachel Varma
Visual Art
Artwork by Alyssa Gava @alyssathecreative
