I See Red
I SEE RED celebrates and elevates the achievements and creativity of all the young women who took part in this Miss Represented project. It is dedicated with love and support to all our sisters who are telling their stories, supporting each other, healing together and rising together.
2020/21 brought a lot of challenges for everyone across the globe. Miss Rep had just started growing relationships with new schools and new young women when the pandemic hit. We knew that the girls taking part would need us more than ever. We delivered weekly sessions across three schools and two pupil referral units and when we couldn’t meet in person we went online, home delivering creative-packs to all the young women taking part. We kept our focus of having meaningful conversations, getting creative, and creating a safe space for members to share thoughts and feelings.
It’s these vital conversations that help us to start our artistic process: creating art, music, spoken word, poetry, dance…
We explored life through different activities such as
- Self Portraits
- Protest Boards
- Refurbishing dolls houses and creating stories and characters for them.
- Writing songs, poems and stories
- Make-up and experimenting with changing ideas around individual identity
S aged 14 commented:
‘lockdown has been difficult, not having any space away from my family, when online doing Miss Rep they all give me space, they know I need that session very much’
We joined together all the different conversations, ideas and creativity from across the different schools and arrived at a central theme exploring anger; our struggles and anxieties that lead to anger, how we channel or release our anger in healthy ways, what are the destructive ways anger can sometimes escape, how can we manage our anger and look after ourselves and those around us? The resulting collaboration was I SEE RED which featured in the 2021 Brighton Festival.
Thanks to our partners at Hove Park School, Dorothy Stringer, Brighton Aldridge Community Academy, Lynchett Close Pupil Referral Unit, Dyke Road Pupil Referral Unit.
Quotes from the young people:
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Feeling lost with not knowing what’s going on, never know what’s coming next. Life is shit, so difficult and depressing feels like time is gone! No one around in this ghost town
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Lockdown, low down When’s it going to stop now Facetiming for 13 hours Zooms doesn’t have no hugging powers!
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I miss my school life that freedom I even miss the school I just want to go back to it all
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Missing my friends and family I want to see everyone again So lonely and depressing When this isolation going to end?