Imagining Resistance through Participatory Photography: Exploring Resistance in Young People Victimised by Interpersonal and Sexual Violence

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In the United Kingdom and throughout the world, young people are experiencing complex safeguarding risks that continually challenge professionals and policy makers tasked with keeping them safe. Over the last several years, child sexual exploitation (CSE) is one particular risk that has gained public and political attention in the UK, following a number of serious case reviews in which young people experienced exploitation and were not kept safe. Professionals continue to struggle in identifying the best approaches to working with young people affected by CSE and other related issues (e.g. such as criminal exploitation and gang violence). Safeguarding is further complicated by the fact that young people do not generally self-identify as victims of exploitation and are often viewed as being 'resistant' to services intended to help them. While 'resistance' has been a term adopted by activists and consumers, and used by researchers in fields such as anthropology and sociology to positively describe how people 'fight back' against oppression and subjugation, it is rarely used in direct practice settings to describe individual acts of 'fighting back' against oppression in relationships - particularly regarding young people. In response to this gap in research and practice, the 'Imagining Resistance' project will engage directly with the concept of resistance through the use of participatory photography workshops. As a research method and medium, photography facilitates self-expression and may capture what might be difficult to express in words. Photography will also help surface ambivalent and contradictory emotions that may characterise young peoples' experiences of resisting. Through the use of creative, visual methods, Imagining Resistance will also bring an arts and humanities perspective into a field dominated by discourses of child protection and risk. Thus by 'imagining' resistance, we aim to work towards visualising, conjuring, and conceptualising with young people what it is like to resist experiences of interpersonal and sexual violence.The project takes place over three years and will involve a series of three 12-week, 2-hour photovoice workshops facilitated by an artist and experienced group facilitator. Two London-based partner organisations that provide services to sexually exploited young people will help recruit six to eight participants for each set of workshops (involving a total of 24-36 young people in all). Young people will also be involved in data analysis and developing key outputs, including an exhibition or public-facing event of their choosing; photographs; digital stories; and a series of 5 short videos at the end of the project aimed at sharing findings with distinct groups of stakeholders: young people, practitioners, researchers, and creative professionals. Key project outputs will be available via the project website and university research centres' websites. These outputs, alongside other datasets (i.e. field notes, transcribed audio recorded workshop discussions), will also be made publicly available, with young people's consent, via the UK Data Archive after the project is complete. Imagining Resistance promises to be of interest to a range of multidisciplinary professionals (including counsellors, therapists, social workers, youth workers) to charity organisations providing specialist support to young people, statutory agencies (e.g. children's services), and creative professionals engaged in collaborative and participatory arts practices for social change. Finally, through this project we hope to close a theoretical gap between larger scale social processes of resisting oppression and the lived experience of people who resist, and understand how visual, participatory methods might help change professional practice and shape wider discourses surrounding CSE and related abuse.