When women and their children are forced to relocate due to domestic abuse their lives and energy are taken over by all the practicalities and emotions involved.
It’s hard to make space or time for anything else.
And yet, women on the move still have their hopes and dreams, their hard-won knowledge, and their ideas and insights. And they want – and deserve – to be heard.
The participatory work in this project provided time and space for women to be creative – to communicate their experiences of forced relocation and tentative resettlement. Groups held in women’s refuges and a women’s centre were a temporary creative space – for women who would soon be on the move again.
And yet they could explore their creativity – even as they remained on the move: not knowing when they would have to relocate again.
Images and captions from their creativity are featured in the report from this research, and also as an example in a new article[1] on creative practice and mobilities. The article includes recognition of sensory experiences, material objects, landscape and place, as well as the importance of co-production and participation and the role of creativity in making issues and ideas public.
Creative practice goes beyond text and words, and enables ongoing communication of mobile lives, even when the individuals themselves may have moved on.
[1] Kaya Barry, Jen Southern, Tess Baxter, Suzy Blondin, Clare Booker, Janet Bowstead, Carly Butler, Rod Dillon, Nick Ferguson, Gudrun Filipska, Michael Hieslmair, Lucy Hunt, Aleksandra Ianchenko, Pia Johnson, Jondi Keane, Martin K. Koszolko, Clare Qualmann, Charlie Rumsby, Catarina Sales Oliveira, Max Schleser, Stephanie Sodero, Aryana Soliz, Louise Ann Wilson, Heidi Wood & Michael Zinganel (2022): An agenda for creative practice in the new mobilities paradigm, Mobilities, DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2022.2136996