WOWsers – The Big Picture – Safety in numbers…and art!

WOWsers – The Big Picture – Safety in numbers…and art!

Youth clubs in Rotherham explore and create art on the theme of safety as part of WOWsers project.

Young women paint a mural of a woman standing in a dark alleyway

With the return of the WOW Rotherham festival – a celebration of women of the world, trans and non-binary communities – Rotherham has been buzzing with an artistic air this Spring. And when could be a better time to get young people involved in creating something incredible?

We have partnered with WOW and Flux Rotherham to bring a special project to the communities of Rotherham. WOWsers – The Big Picture – sets out to empower women and girls through the language of art. We joined forces with the team at the Bill Chafer Youth Centre in Bramley to get their young women and girls youth group involved in the WOWsers project. Over the past month, a group of 10 young women have worked together with the Children’s Capital of Culture engagement assistants to create a piece of artwork inspired by the theme of ‘Safety’.

2 young women focus on painting and drawing a piece of artwork

The opportunity to create a piece of artwork to feature at the WOW Rotherham festival stood as a chance to highlight what was most important to the group and they soon decided upon a theme, being extremely passionate about expressing to the world the issues they face and keen to bring these thoughts and feelings to light. The sessions involved exploring what safety means to them, the feelings and fears surrounding walking home alone, feeling judged on their appearance, and the complex issues that young people, especially girls, face when tackling safety in public settings.

Jade, a member of the youth group, reflected:

“So, we’ve talked about the worries of women – not just women, men too – the worries that they get when walking through the street at night. Like, going home from a friend’s. We all sat down and we split the groups up and we came up with the idea of a woman stood, like in an alleyway, to try and describe how it feels when you walk home.”

The artwork, featuring a woman’s figure standing in a dark alleyway, is surrounded by large speech bubbles and words highlighting the thoughts and feelings of the young women. Members of the public were invited to add colourful handprints to the canvas, to symbolise how widespread these feelings are. The artwork aims to empower women and young girls through this, symbolising a sense of belonging and the comfort and safety the group feels when they are together or have people around them.

Strength in numbers – and in artwork!

Artwork inspired by the theme of 'safety', painted on small canvases, sit atop a shelf.

The WOWsers project has also seen to other youth centres around Rotherham receiving similar art workshops to create pieces using the same theme. Our engagement assistants developed and delivered workshops, creating art alongside young people and children from centres such as JADE Dinnington to feature at WOW Rotherham.

The piece created by the young women at Bill Chafer’s Youth Centre featured at the WOW Rotherham 2024 festival on Saturday the 11th of May at Minster Gardens in Rotherham.