Imagining Resistance through Participatory Photography: Exploring Resistance in Young People Victimised by Interpersonal and Sexual Violence

In the United Kingdom and throughout the world, young people are experiencing complex safeguarding risks that continually challenge professionals and policy makers tasked with keeping them safe. Over the last several years, child sexual exploitation (CSE) is one particular risk that has gained public and political attention in the UK, following a number of serious case reviews in which young people experienced exploitation and were not kept safe. Professionals continue to struggle in identifying the best approaches to working with young people affected by CSE and other related issues (e.g. such as criminal exploitation and gang violence). Safeguarding is further complicated by the fact that young people do not generally self-identify as victims of exploitation and are often viewed as being 'resistant' to services intended to help them.

While 'resistance' has been a term adopted by activists and consumers, and used by researchers in fields such as anthropology and sociology to positively describe how people 'fight back' against oppression and subjugation, it is rarely used in direct practice settings to describe individual acts of 'fighting back' against oppression in relationships - particularly regarding young people. In response to this gap in research and practice, the 'Imagining Resistance' project will engage directly with the concept of resistance through the use of participatory photography workshops. As a research method and medium, photography facilitates self-expression and may capture what might be difficult to express in words. Photography will also help surface ambivalent and contradictory emotions that may characterise young peoples' experiences of resisting.

Through the use of creative, visual methods, Imagining Resistance will also bring an arts and humanities perspective into a field dominated by discourses of child protection and risk. Thus by 'imagining' resistance, we aim to work towards visualising, conjuring, and conceptualising with young people what it is like to resist experiences of interpersonal and sexual violence.

The project takes place over three years and will involve a series of three 12-week, 2-hour photovoice workshops facilitated by an artist and experienced group facilitator. Two London-based partner organisations that provide services to sexually exploited young people will help recruit six to eight participants for each set of workshops (involving a total of 24-36 young people in all). Young people will also be involved in data analysis and developing key outputs, including an exhibition or public-facing event of their choosing; photographs; digital stories; and a series of 5 short videos at the end of the project aimed at sharing findings with distinct groups of stakeholders: young people, practitioners, researchers, and creative professionals. Key project outputs will be available via the project website and university research centres' websites. These outputs, alongside other datasets (i.e. field notes, transcribed audio recorded workshop discussions), will also be made publicly available, with young people's consent, via the UK Data Archive after the project is complete.

Imagining Resistance promises to be of interest to a range of multidisciplinary professionals (including counsellors, therapists, social workers, youth workers) to charity organisations providing specialist support to young people, statutory agencies (e.g. children's services), and creative professionals engaged in collaborative and participatory arts practices for social change. Finally, through this project we hope to close a theoretical gap between larger scale social processes of resisting oppression and the lived experience of people who resist, and understand how visual, participatory methods might help change professional practice and shape wider discourses surrounding CSE and related abuse.

Imagining Resistance uses photovoice workshops to develop understanding of resistance in the context of child sexual exploitation (CSE) and related abuse among young people. We bring an arts and humanities perspective into a field dominated by notions of risk and safeguarding, and will use creative tools to explore with young people how they frame their experiences, identities, and actions as a starting point for a fundamentally new way of supporting young people at risk of sexual violence and exploitation. We aim to better understand how practices of resistance, which are difficult to conceptualise and communicate, are part of their experience; photography has the potential to help articulate this difficult and perhaps unspeakable concept. Understanding experiences of resistance will also help us challenge current discourses surrounding CSE, and co-produce with young people new knowledge and a model of working that will influence how practitioners, third sector organisations, and local authorities, service commissioners and policy makers understand young people's experiences and needs. This project is timely, as public and political interest in CSE remain high, and current discourses surrounding CSE continue to focus primarily on risk, harm, and vulnerability.
Young people will benefit from participating in a project that facilitates collaboration, choice, and empowerment; these three elements are essential to recovering from traumatic experiences like sexual violence. They will explore their own resistance strategies and surface underemphasised aspects of their own strengths and resilience. To affect change that reaches young people, we aim to inform the practice of partner organisations and other stakeholders including social workers, youth workers, mental health professionals, charity organisations such as Barnardos, the NSPCC, Children's Society, the YMCA, a minimum of 10 local authorities across London and the Southeast where PI and Co-I have strong connections, and service commissioners such as the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime. Creative practices are largely underutilised across the sector, where traditional practices (e.g. talk therapy and one-to-one support) are far more common. Partner organisations are keen to engage creatively but often lack in-house expertise and a framework for considering how creative practices can be incorporated into their work. This as a key opportunity to explore how a group-based arts intervention might simultaneously develop knowledge about young people's experiences and offer a new solution to working with young people for whom practitioners have continually found difficult to engage. The project will enable organisations to engage more meaningfully with young people through creative practice, transforming an arts experience into sustainable outcomes for young people. Professionals will gain a holistic understanding of young peoples' resilience and will provide them with the language and skills to explore resistance, ultimately informing relevant policy and guidance.
For artists, the project will demonstrate the successes and challenges of working in partnership with specialist support providers to engage vulnerable young people, and offer new ways of processing and expressing their experiences. This project will offer a model of engagement that can be learned from and shared widely amongst them. The project findings will be disseminated amongst arts networks including Photovoice, FORM Collective, Photofusion, Liverpool Biennial, and Serpentine Galleries. There are also many art courses focusing on contemporary art practice in the public sphere and media practices for social change (e.g. Royal College of Art, University of Sussex School of Media, Film and Music) which are in need of project examples and learning resources for their students. Finally CSE is a global problem; the team's strong links with EU and USA partners will maximise impact beyond the UK.