On the 5 November 2024, Flip the Streets collaborated with young people from the Inspire Training Project in Swansea to create two murals which express the values they believe to be important in combatting misogyny.
Created with the artists from Fresh Creative, the murals are displayed within the Inspire Training Centre in Swansea and act to inform and remind all that misogyny is not acceptable and will not be tolerated in their learning environment.
Misogyny is an issue which spreads hate and harmful stereotypes about women. It is often normalised, can go unnoticed and sometimes not taken as seriously as other forms of abuse and discrimination in society. Staff at Inspire had identified this issue as a salient one, affecting the lives and interactions of learners and staff at the Centre. To address this, Flip the Streets were invited to work with Inspire to explore and help change the narratives surrounding women and girls.
Several carefully planned workshops were conducted around the theme which acknowledged the existence of the issue in society and allowed the young people to think about it critically, alongside sexism, gender stereotyping. Commenting on the issue in the workshop, one learner stated, “I knew about misogyny before, but some of the others didn’t, and it’s important”. The learners at the Centre felt it vital to act against the normative, negative values and ideals expressed by some. They also wanted to challenge the anti-feminist, sexist, and sometimes violent attitudes towards girls and women proliferated by some males in the online ‘manosphere’.
Inspire told us that young men and women often feel pressurised to act in a particular way, and the workshops highlighted the difficulties young people can face in standing up against misogyny within their peer groups and other community settings. In the design workshop, the learners felt the Lion, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow, characters from the film the Wizard of Oz, were good illustrations to use in the design of one of the murals. For them, this best illustrated the personal attributes necessary to challenge negative narratives amongst their peers and in on-line spaces: courage, heart (empathy) and brains (knowledge), a point they were keen to convey to others.
The themes of mutual respect and equality were also identified as important in the workshops, and a second mural was created around these, where gender neutral hands were colourfully and creatively depicted as joined together in unity, respect and equality. Those learners more experienced in graffiti art used their own ‘patterns’ in the design illustrating their commitment to the issue.
Nicola Sillman, Centre Manager, summed up the success of the project as “an incredible project; fun, creative, and engaging for everyone, highlighting the vital importance of standing against hate and misogyny”.
The artwork created is testimony to the effort of the learners and staff at Inspire to challenge the harmful narratives underpinning sexism and misogyny in society. Going forward, it is hoped, that the murals will act as a positive tool for facilitating difficult conversations about misogyny, and for supporting change amongst young people and their peers. They create clarity for the ethos of Inspire; Misogyny is not acceptable anywhere and will not be tolerated in their learning/training environment.
