workshop 7
Speaking out
overview
In the previous two workshops, we explored ways of caring for ourselves and our needs, and expressing them creatively. Unfortunately, we must acknowledge that our students are not always heard or able to express themselves.
In this session we think about what it feels like to be silenced, but also the possibility of speaking out and being heard.
It is an opportunity to open up an empathetic discussion of consent and boundaries, using the students’ own feelings and experience as a starting point.
It is also an opportunity to discuss power and privilege, and intersecting inequities – the ways in which our society privileges some voices over others, and what we can do to redress this.
YOU WILL NEED
Pen and paper
check-in
Discuss together, what it feels like when your voice is silenced, unheard or not listened to.
Ask students to draw an image in their journals in response, giving only a minute or two. This could be an abstract scribble or shape.
Go round and share ideas, not pressuring students to show what they’ve drawn or written, but perhaps everyone offering one word or phrase.
creative activity: collaborative poems
Read out the following sentence starters which will make up your collaborative poem, giving everyone enough time to finish each one however they choose in their journals.
I am silent when…
The colours of my silence are…
“I’m not needed here?
Do my friends care about me?
My mum is the only one who listens.
Why are you catcalling me? I’m not even wearing revealing clothes.”
The silence in my mouth tastes like…
The silence inside me feels like…
The room around me smells like…
When I am silent, I am…
The words of others sound like…
The words I would like to speak out are…
The colours of the words I’d say are…
The words in my mouth taste like…
The sound of my words is like…
When I speak out, I am…
You may wish to offer a few ideas, using scenarios or ideas from the check-in discussion.
When you’ve finished, ask everyone to pick their favourite 2 sentences, and cut them out of their journal or write out on a slip of paper.
As one large group or in small groups, work together to piece together a collaborative poem.
You can rearrange the order of the sentences, add several similar ones to create a pattern of repetition, add titles for sections, or change the sentence starters to create more flow.
You can also add a title, building on the themes of silence and speaking out.
Once you’ve finished, do a collective reading of the poem, in unison or with the authors of each sentence speaking out their own words.
This could be practised and recorded, or performed later on in an assembly or at a Be Her Lead event.
discussion prompts
In what scenarios / areas of you life do you feel silenced or unheard?
What internal and external factors cause you to feel silenced or unheard?
What might make speaking out difficult?
What might make speaking out possible?
Whose voices would you like to hear more of in our group / school / wider society?
How can this group help amplify your voice or the voices you’d like to hear?
check-out
Go back to the check-in exercise and remind each other of what being silenced or not listened to feels like.
Now do the same drawing exercise, but this time drawing a representation of what it feels like to speak out and be heard.
Further reading / thinking
This workshop is potentially a good way in to talking about consent, sex and bodily boundaries. We are frustrated with the simplistic ideal of consent where the responsibility is implicitly on the person under pressure, to assertively say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. We need to acknowledge the very real external and internal pressures that make consent and maintaining boundaries difficult, often especially difficult for women.
We believe it is more helpful to take an empathetic approach that takes into account the complexity of situations where consent might be difficult. In this workshop, we explore the underlying emotions and contextual factors that might mean a young person is silenced or ignored.
We also ask participants to imagine and visualise how speaking out and being assertive might feel and look like. This could help them turn this into a reality, but is dependent on their context, and the behaviour of others, too… so it is vital that you work to ensure that this workshop feels like a space where students can speak out about feeling silenced.
This idea is helpfully explored in the book Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again by Katherine Angel. Angel points out that all too often, consent workshops in schools and universities “place the burden of good sexual interaction on women’s behaviour”.