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Description
Persons who most commonly experience intersectional discrimination are women from ethnic minorities, women with disabilities, elderly women, queer persons with disabilities, and elderly and teenage LGBT+ persons /Cieślikowska, Sarata, 2012/. People in minority groups act increasingly frequently to support equality, such as self-advocacy initiatives. Research has shown that a visual message draws greater attention and stays in the memory longer than a verbal message conveyed /for example Hayek, 2008/, while during workshops on discrimination, the pictures are usually photographs taken in a US context or graphics that contribute little, taken from the Internet. Illustration in this way may give an impression that the discussion does not concern real people living in Poland here and now.In the project, we wish to draw attention to the visual aspect of information conveyed regarding equality and the particular situation of people who experience intersectional discrimination.We will hold storytelling and discrimination prevention workshops (three-day meeting) and workshops on self-advocacy and graphic design (two three-day meetings). We will provide participants with graphic design and self-advocacy training, and set tasks to do in between the meetings. Once the devised self-advocacy measures have been conducted, we will evaluate and widely distribute them. The participants will improve their graphic design, writing information for release, and advocacy competences, and prepare five self-advocacy measures and ten illustrated information packs on equality and diversity.Ten women, transgender, and non-binary people experiencing intersectional discrimination will be involved in the project.
Summary of project results
The project addresses the issue of multiple discrimination. Individuals most often experiencing such discrimination are women from ethnic minorities, women with disabilities, older women, queer people with disabilities, older and teenage LGBT+ people (Cieslikowska, Sarata, 2012). Increasingly, these people undertake equality, anti-discriminatory self-advocacy activities. However, they sometimes lack the skills and tools to carry out actions that involve, among other things, working with their own identity and history. Meanwhile, groups at risk of discrimination, such as the LGBT+ community, are perceived by much of society as a homogeneous group with no other identity markers. At the same time, as many studies have shown, in equality messages (and not only) it is the visual level that attracts more attention and is remembered. Unfortunately, the photographs or graphics often used in equality activities - which are not authentic or from different cultural backgrounds - tend to challenge or trivialise the message.
The project organised a series of three-day training sessions, including a workshop on storytelling and anti-discrimination, and two workshops on self-advocacy and graphic design. Participants in the workshops received individual and group coaching support in graphic design and self-advocacy. In the end, a total of six self-advocacy activities were produced, including workshops, Instagram profiles and performances. Nineteen sets of graphic design materials on equality and diversity were also produced.
The 9 participants - who experience multiple discrimination, e.g. on the basis of gender, psychosexual orientation, gender identity, origin, neuroatypism, disability - improved their self-advocacy competences and developed skills in graphic design, message formulation and presentation of personal perspectives. Concrete initiatives and materials with diverse, out-of-the-box self-advocacy messages were created.