Developing innovative arts-based approaches to prevent gender-based violence through feminist activism among youth in the favelas of Brazil

While Gender-based Violence (GBV) occurs everywhere, countries such as Brazil are especially badly affected. GBV is a key development challenge with its elimination being central to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 on gender equality. Although existing research acknowledges that younger women bear the brunt of GBV, their experiences as activists are poorly understood and under-researched despite a 'feminist spring' of protest among youth across Latin America over the last decade.

The combination of art and activism has been key to this, suggesting possibilities for preventing GBV through engaging with feminist 'artivism'.

This project develops an innovative translational arts-based approach to prevent GBV in Brazil and creates engagement and policy pathways that can be scaled-up transnationally. Drawing on established successful international collaborations, it will be conducted in the favelas of Maré in Rio de Janeiro with Redes da Maré (Redes) (a community-based human rights NGO), together with People's Palace Projects (an arts centre using creativity for transformation - PPP) and Women of the World Foundation (a global movement creating a gender equal world - WOW).

Focusing on young people (mainly cisgender and trans women as victims but also some men as perpetrators aged 16-25) as the key to preventing GBV among future generations, it will work in Maré where the team has developed pioneering research on GBV since 2016. This showed that 57% of cisgender women experienced GBV, especially young (aged 18-29) and Afro-descendant women.

Working with Redes and their Women's House, this project explores the drivers of GBV in terms of social norms and structures and how to build feminist youth activism. Inspired by Latin American feminist decolonial scholarship and protest, the study theorises how to transform protest against GBV into feminist activism for prevention and the role of co-produced arts-based approaches within this.

It does so through applied arts workshops with young people encouraging conversations around GBV using poetry, photography, dance, and digital storytelling led by local artists. It will culminate in a co-curated multi-media installation and a creative youth encounters toolkit to maximise awareness and profile raising. Through focus groups, storytelling and video-making, the young people will develop digital educational materials on preventing GBV to be disseminated in secondary schools across Brazil and Latin America through south-south collaboration facilitated by Redes, PPP and WOW as a way of informing the next generation on how to prevent GBV in the future.

A key aspect of the engagement pathway is the curation of a Day of the Girl Festival in Rio co-curated by youth from Maré showcasing their creative youth encounters. Developing south-north, south-south and transnational linkages, the project will also stage an International Girls Festival in London with WOW featuring a learning workshop led by Maré youth communicated through their global partnerships network reaching 63.5 million people each year, across 45 locations and six continents.

These young people will be included in the WOW Young Leaders Directory, and two transnational exchanges among youth between Rio and London will be developed Finally, the project develops a transnational policy pathway through Redes' ongoing work with the Municipal Council of Policies for Women in Rio where they are policy champions on their advisory council and WOW's work with the Young People's Action Group (YPAG) as part of the Violence Reduction Unit at the Greater London Assembly.