Love Should Always Be Safe

Groundswell’s Voices Her’d program is partnering with Day One to create a suite of both printed and digitally-accessible materials with the intention to increase awareness around the issue of intimate partner violence in teen relationships and to promote Day One’s available services.

This dynamic collaboration is a pilot program that will utilize both digital and traditional printmaking media.  By referencing poster traditions rooted historically in sociopolitical movements, DIY culture and public information campaigns, the Voices Her’d Design Team will advance these techniques forward into a contemporary youth-focused context.  The project will emphasize literacy in conceptual research and development, design and illustration skills, current design software and fundamental web-based communications.   Based on their community education model, Day One will provide comprehensive topical training to the Voices Her’d Design Team.  Our design process and development will be informed by interaction with  Day One’s Peer Leaders, creating a unique opportunity for peer-to-peer content development.  We will use existing web-based platforms to house all elements of the campaign in addition to a distribution plan targeting both educational institutions and youth peer networks.

Through this innovative collaboration, we will meet Day One’s mission of engaging youth in designing projects to raise awareness in their communities and will honor Day One’s commitment to an empowerment model that invests young people in maintaining safe relationships for themselves and their peers.  Simultaneously, we will actively implement Groundswell’s mission of bringing together artists, youth and community organizations to use art as a tool for social change, engage youth in societal and personal transformation, and give expression to ideas and perspectives that are underrepresented in the public dialogue.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT:

In addition to acknowledging the historical role of posters in both socio-political and liberation movements and public education campaigns, this project references the long legacy of collective printmaking in American women’s struggle.  The 70’s-80’s saw the development of radical women-run, peer-education based printmaking collectives around the country, the most notable of which included New York’s own Creative Women’s Collective and the Madame Binh Graphics Collective.   These collectives effectively taught women the skills necessary to publicize their perspectives regarding both women’s struggle and intersectional movements.  The 90’s saw the rise of Riot Grrl culture, and with it came a plethora of girl-authored zines which challenged gender paradigms, addressed a contemporary perspective on girls’ experiences, and were disseminated through mail-order based peer networks.  It is in this tradition that the Voices Her’d Design Team will be documenting our process on a web-based zine that emphasizes full transparency of the design process and is authored predominantly by the girls themselves.  Effectively, this design campaign is modeled on both a youth and women’s empowerment model, facilitating a space where participants collectively and collaboratively create materials to be disseminated to their peers.

This project is made possible through the generous support of EILEEN FISHER. Major financial support for Groundswell’s 2011 Summer Leadership Institute (SLI) is also contributed by Brooklyn Community Foundation, Catalog for Giving, Charles Lawrence Keith and Clara Miller Foundation, David Rockefeller Fund, Edelman Community Investment, Ethel and W. George Kennedy Family Foundation, Lambent Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, and Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation, in addition to numerous individuals.

SLI is made possible in part by public funds administered by the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development Summer Youth Employment Program, New York City Department of Education, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts.

Groundswell is grateful to New York State Senator Velmanette Montgomery; the Office of the Mayor of New York City; the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President; and New York City Council Members Sara M. Gonzalez, Letitia James, Brad Lander, Stephen Levin, and Domenic M. Recchia, Jr.