Young Collective Voices for Safer Spaces was a series of capacity building workshops facilitated jointly by Red Dot Foundation, the Australian High Commission in Mumbai and the Queensland University of Technology’s Design Lab and Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice. I was involved in designing the sessions in collaboration with Elsa of Red Dot Foundation, school teachers, Associate Professor Jackie Kauli and Associate Professor Verena Thomas. Through a series of interactive creative workshops, 20 youth from Mumbai, Pune and Goa developed critical thinking and advocacy skills to challenge harmful gender stereotypes. The third and final session of the 3 part workshop series was held on 4th March. After a recap of the two previous sessions, the students were encouraged to each share 1 or 2 key points that stood out for them from the previous session. This was followed by an exercise on expressing oneself through movement. The students then went into breakout rooms, where they discussed the past sessions and then each wrote a letter to their future selves in the backdrop of biases that they encounter in the present. At the end of the sessions, the students had the opportunity to decide who amongst them would conduct an Insta Live interview from Safecity’s Instagram account on International Women’s Day 2022 with a senior female leader from the Australian Consulate. The students went through a session with the RDF team where they were taken through the process of hosting an Insta Live. They then put their heads together and brainstormed questions that could be asked at the interview.
Workshop 1
Workshop 2
Workshop 3