Transforming trans-national landscapes of gender-based violence through trans-sensory storying

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This proposal follows on from the project 'The Immobilities of gender-based violence in the Covid 19 pandemic' in generating impact and engagement by communicating and its findings and creating opportunities to deliberate them for new and international audiences. The original project demonstrated that GBV occurs in a 'continuum of mobile space' in which women are im/mobilised in different ways. This was highlighted by the isolations and intensifications of spaces as a result of constrained movement during the Covid 19 pandemic. We showed that storying reveals new knowledge of GBV that has relevance beyond the pandemic. We found that the im/mobilities of the Covid 19 pandemic and lockdowns created spaces for reflection on GBV throughout lifetimes. Stories that conveyed the 'felt' experience of GBV engaged readers in the apparently 'mundane' as well as 'more serious' aspects of GBV. Nevertheless, policy and public engagement tends to be informed primarily by the quantitative analysis of crime statistics, which are fundamentally flawed in representing a genuine picture of the felt/lived experiences of GBV. There is an urgent need to acknowledge the value of qualitative accounts of GBV - both by the general public and policymakers and practitioners (e.g. police and transport providers) in seeking to transform the landscape of GBV. This includes accounts that are often absent from the public domain - of minoritised communities within which GBV may be more commonplace.In tandem, discussions of GBV often take place within, rather than across, national borders, despite GBV being a global issue shared (predominantly) by women and girls (including trans women and girls) across the world. Thus, the project will span national borders, sharing stories across continents and building new international partnerships. We seek to engage new audiences in both the UK and Mexico, a country that has both faced high levels of GBV and where GBV is collectively challenged through policy interventions and highly visible campaigning. Trans-national deliberations, supported with engaging multi-sensory storying, can unlock the pervading cultural conditions that facilitate GBV. By adopting a trans-national approach we can begin transform the landscapes of GBV, challenging cultures rooted in misogyny. We do so by focusing on trans-sensory storying, which we propose here as a new concept in framing GBV storying and as a new and method of engagement that provides a pathway to impact. The trans-sensory stories of GBV will be translated into diverse and connected sensory outputs and used to elicit dialogue. We invite artists and creative writers in the UK and Mexico to translate stories of GBV into original creative outputs - sound art, comic stories, short stories, poems, dioramas - for interactive exhibitions in Brighton and Mexico City. We will engage new audiences - purposefully focusing on groups who might normally disengage from this topic - including members of the general public, but also academics, community groups, policymakers and practitioners whose primary interest is not GBV, with the trans-sensory stories and invite them to take part in Roundtables - facilitated discussion groups with a clear purpose and intended outcomes. The trans-sensory outputs of the project will be brought together in an edited collection, which will be made accessible to the general public by avoiding complex academic language and using illustrations. The exhibition will be made available as a physical and digital resource for future display.