This post is from our Safe Public Spaces Team in Lyon, France. The SPSM projects are supported by SSH donors. If you would like to donate to support the 2016 mentees, we would greatly appreciate it!
The Stop Street Harassment mentoring program comes to an end with the holiday and we must confess, it’s so good to rest! Especially so when having accomplished everything you had in mind and more, and looking forward to even bigger developments!
From a material point of view, we’ve manage to print three copies of our exhibition, all on thick laminated paper. Two in size A4 and one in size A3. This allowed us to use it in different places at the same time and, since the posters are very light, to send it via regular post without any difficulty. Also, the city council of Grenoble, who displayed it on huge panels, was so thrilled about the outcomes of the project that our contact asked us permission to re-print the version we came up to together on roll-ups and already booked six one-week-long exhibitions in different places of the city for 2016.
We’ve received several other requests for renting our exhibition, coming from city councils, universities, high schools or non-profit organizations. The variety of organizations wishing to use it is proof to us that street harassment is an issue that a lot of people feel concerned about, as everyone should, that people are ready to speak up whenever offered an opportunity to do so and that public representatives are willing to broach the subject with us. The latter has been proved recently by the French government launching a campaign on his own against sexist harassment in public transportation. We feel very proud to have achieved such a recognition of the problem.
Since our mid-way blog post in October, we have had time to compile the many feedback we’ve got from places we showed our exhibition and from its visitors as well. And it has been very positive ! People reported that this was a really fun way to approach such a subject and, whatever the age or profile of the visitor, having learned or discovered at least one thing they’d never thought about. Here lies the real achievement for us, and it was great to collect all kinds of comments.
Last but not least, our project is far from done, and it fills us with joy and great expectations ! Stop Harcèlement de Rue is composed by several groups in different cities, and some of them feel comfortable to use the exhibition for their school workshops and presentations. So it will be sent to Paris and another city yet to be chosen. But the big news is we made a new partner, the team organizing the Lyon BD Festival, a comics festival taking place in June. Together, we’ll launch a fundraising campaign at the beginning of February to be able to pay new artists for added posters and design to the exhibition. We’re already in touch with half a dozen of illustrators and comics authors who are willing to participate. The augmented exhibition will be printed on big roll-ups and presented during the week of the festival in a well frequented place in the city center. We will then use this new version for our own events and workshops.
So this has been four exciting months for us, we feel that we’ve been able to start making a difference on the street harassment matter and that strong enriching partnerships have emerged and will allow us to continue.
We wish to thank Holly and Stop Street Harassment again for their support and kindness, and hope we’ll be able to meet in the flesh someday!
Anne Favier co-directs Stop Harcèlement de Rue – Lyon.
