“CONSENT IS” Campaign

Client

In 2015, the Ontario government launched It’s Never OK: An Action Plan to Stop Sexual Violence and Harassment focused on steps to change attitudes, provide support to survivors, and increase responsiveness around sexual violence and harassment. The province issued an RFP via the Ontario Arts Council, for community-engaged public education projects to effect awareness and behavioral change around gender-based violence within the province. In partnership with Sistering, a frontline service organization for women and gender diverse people, we won the RFP for a project addressing issues of consent.

Problem

Based roundtable conversations with women using Sistering services, consent was a priority issue. Situated within the context of social service provision within Ontario, women at Sistering identified consent as a needed starting place for more public awareness around problems of gender-based violence for people who are marginalized based on race, immigration status, low-income and precarious housing circumstances, criminalization, and drug use.

Solution

Taking place over 2 years, the learning solution was a series of arts-based workshop intensives which engaged a group of 8 women to identify and communicate their lived experience. Using the framing question, “What would it look like if we lived in a world with consent?”, the curriculum merged cultural production and campaign thinking to share proactive behaviors through public art, digital media, and print publications to a target audience of social service professionals. The learning cohort explored campaign strategy, developed arts-based messaging, and presented the campaign in public forums. Project facilitation involved a Gender Violence Expert to provide psycho-social support and 3 professional artists to facilitate creative messaging.

Why this solution?

  • Following Key Best Practices for Effective Sexual Violence Public Education Campaigns, the use of a positive guiding question throughout all stages of the learning project resulted in a campaign that communicated positive social norms.  

  • The presence of a Gender Violence Expert as co-facilitator for all workshop sessions provided for trauma-informed support and referrals.

  • The involvement of guest artists contributed to expanded professional networks and capacity-building for future opportunities in arts, advocacy, and campaign work.

  • In-person facilitation involving an arts-based approach allowed for step-by-step choices around representation and confidentiality while speaking to sensitive personal experiences regarding gender-based violence.

  • A multi-year project based on real-world application of a comprehensive skillset allowed for sustained, personalized, and meaningful learner engagement.

  • The intentional involvement of women in decision-making and leadership development meant the campaign was rooted in diverse understandings of consent.

Learning Objectives

Because the learning project involved a multi-year curriculum to develop and implement a public education campaign, the overarching learning objectives were multifold:

  • Understand the elements and steps of a public campaign strategy.

  • Identify topical priorities for the consent campaign based on relevance to the learning cohort and their community.

  • Apply the learning cohort’s understandings of campaign strategy and consent within artistic creation processes geared towards public messaging.   

  • Analyze group-made artwork to identify campaign demands and communicate these through succinct written text for use in web and print materials.

  • Justify the campaign’s premise to public audiences, via facilitated dialogue, speaker sessions, and public art events.

Process

CURRICULUM DESIGN

I led all aspects of curriculum design and project planning in collaboration with a Gender Violence Expert, to ensure consistent support for the learning cohort. I coordinated with 3 professional artists on curriculum design and facilitation planning for delivery of specific curriculum components. The curriculum included 55 hours of in-person training over 3 phases of instruction, all of which employed group-based dialogue and popular education methods. These phases included campaign strategy fundamentals, arts-based messaging and public education stakeholder planning. Outputs of the curriculum design phase included detailed facilitation outlines, artistic reference materials, and trauma-informed protocol for learner support.

EVALUATION DESIGN

I led evaluation planning in partnership with York University professor Dr. Sarah Flicker, an expert in community-engaged research. The first objective of the evaluation plan was to assess the retention and application of the learning cohort’s skills for implementing public education campaigns that incorporate gender-based analysis. The second objective of the evaluation plan was to assess the effectiveness of the campaign to communicate problems and solutions around consent to target stakeholder groups. We integrated the evaluation plan with Dr. Flicker’s semester-long graduate course on qualitative research methods, to engage a team of 40 graduate students in data collection and analysis with the learning cohort and project facilitators.

CURRICULUM DELIVERY

The curriculum was implemented over 16 sessions varying from 3 to 6 hours in length and spanning 18 months, with the Gender Violence Expert in attendance at every session.

During the first phase of delivery, the learning cohort gained an understanding of  the phases and steps of campaign development, identified priority issues around consent faced by marginalized women, and interpreted ways in which digital media and public art can be used within campaign strategy.  

The second phase focused on art creation, in which the learning cohort analyzed symbolism within photographic images, created metaphors for consent using performative gestures and objects, provided constructive feedback on creative ideas, identified elements of effective animation design, experimented with hands-on approaches for storyboarding and stop-motion animation, and applied these skills to generate a series of performance photography images and animations communicate problems and solutions on issues of consent.  

In the third phase, the cohort determined and wrote audience-focused campaign demands, identified organizational partners, determined ethical guidelines for partnership development, contributed to branding design, and assessed how the campaign messaging aligned with criteria for Key Best Practices for Gender-Based Violence Education.

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

The target audiences for public engagement were higher education students and practicing professionals within social service fields of housing, healthcare, newcomer services, and gender based violence response. To reach these audiences, I developed partnerships with service organizations, student groups, and college and university departments. We mobilized the campaign through public art installations, workshops, forums, and presentations. Event locations included the University of Toronto, York University, Fleming College, George Brown College, CUPE Ontario annual convention, and the Toronto Police Domestic Violence Committee. Within a year, the project reached dozens of organizations and over 13,000 social media and website hits.

EVALUATION

To evaluate the learning cohort’s retention and effective application of public education campaign skills, I conducted group check-outs and distributed surveys at the end of each workshop. Dr. Sarah Flicker led the training and supervision of a graduate research methods seminar. The students designed and conducted in-depth interviews which explored the process and impact of the learning experience for the learning cohort and project facilitators. Based on preliminary findings, the students worked in teams to conduct thorough qualitative data analysis and deliver written findings. Each team reported their findings at a day-long research forum attended by the learning cohort, project facilitators, and Sistering staff.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign’s messaging to target stakeholder groups, I collected feedback surveys at each workshop and community forum. The project employed an innovative approach for audience feedback through a public art installation that invited visitors to enter a video booth which presented the learning cohort’s photography and animations. The viewers were then able to record a selfie video talking about what they learned, and about what consent meant to them. This creative approach to audience engagement factored into the assessment of campaign outcomes.

Outcomes

Areas of learner cohort skill development that were particularly effective and meaningful included creative idea generation, methods for public messaging to target audiences, narrative storytelling, interpretation of visual and written messaging, and technical art-making aptitudes. Areas of personal learning included:

  • discovery of community roles and impacts

  • awareness of judgements and fears

  • methods for navigating personal boundaries and triggers

  • harmonizing personal and collective lived experiences

  • satisfaction from the completion of artistic work

  • the ability to relate personal and structural aspects of gender-based violence

  • choice-making about self-representation

  • the impact of working together around a shared concern

Workshop surveys indicated the positive impacts of interactive exercises, transferrable skill development, satisfaction with the quality of finished art pieces, and the usefulness of real-world examples and reference materials. Reported challenges included feelings of tiredness or stress within the group setting, a need for more harm reduction support, the time limitation of the workshops, the need to learn at a fast pace, and the desire to expand the number of artistic outputs in order to prevent narrowed representations of lived experience.

Public engagement surveys showed that the project’s messaging encouraged systemic analysis, and that audiences had identified proactive strategies and actions steps around problems of consent. These included integration of the campaign call to action within organizational practices and professional networks; encouraging group dialogue about consent; active listening; transparency; and commitment to increase accessibility of essential resources and information. Of Likert scale evaluations from 36 workshop participants, the following percentages agreed or strongly agreed: 85% thought the information presented was useful; 73% could identify situations in which consent is needed; 91% had an increased awareness of consent; 89% had an increased understanding of consent; 79% reported an increased intention to use their learnings to prevent and respond to issues of gender-based violence and harassment.