Creating our ‘WOWsers’ programme 2024

By Sophie Ellingham

 

Almost one year ago today I took part in coordinating the ‘Wowsers’ programme as part of my Traineeship with Flux Rotherham. I’m now going into my second year of coordinating this programme but as an Alumni Engagement Assistant for Children’s Capital of Culture. It’s been an interesting experience being able to highlight key differences from my experience as a Trainee to my experience now as an Alumni and I’d love to tell you all about it.

Firstly, for context, I’m going to tell you what our ‘Wowsers’ programme is. It is typically a 6-8 week programme for young people to express themselves through a creative medium of their choice. Wow organisers identify a group of young women, girls and non-binary people to meet with and discuss the topics of the upcoming Wow Festival and the young people decide which topic they’d like to explore most and how they want to explore this to show at the festival.

So, what are we doing this year for the ‘Wowsers’ programme? Well, we met with the Bramley Youth Group in early April and explored the themes for the upcoming Wow Festival which were: gender identity, safety, mental health and similar topics. We discussed these themes in depth with them and they decided they felt most connected to safety and how they felt walking home alone at night. We then asked them what art medium they wanted to explore for this topic. They were nervous at first, most felt like they had no artistic abilities at all. But after some discussion, we settled on splatter art, this requires little intricacy and is an easy art form for anyone to explore. They also came up with the wonderful idea of a large scale mural in which a young girl is pictured in the centre and surrounded by scary thoughts that the young girls themselves think when they walk home alone. On the day of the festival, they decided they wanted attendees to throw paint and press their hand prints to cover these scary thoughts. We loved this idea and took it to the festival organisers, they loved the idea as well and with that, we began making arrangements!

 

 

We had four sessions with this youth group, in the first session, we introduced them to the Wow Festival, and they decided to paint a mural. In the second we worked with them to choose key phrases they wanted to feature on the mural. In the third session we painted the mural with them and our artist Grace. In the fourth session, we discussed safety more in depth and discussed ways they can feel safer when walking alone.

Throughout the sessions, the girls of the youth group felt empowered and listened to, one young girl spoke with me and made a point of saying she knew what a big opportunity this was, and she was so glad we chose her youth group to work with. It was so lovely to hear how this project impacted them and how much they enjoyed it.

Their youth group leader, Jean said, “I was unsure at the start that they wouldn’t get stuck into this project but they absolutely did and they’ve really enjoyed themselves. It’s so important that we’re raising awareness of the issues around safety and we’re very excited for the 11th of May!”

The festival day was an overwhelming experience, seeing the sense of community and solidarity amongst women, girls and non-binary people and how everyone could relate and felt connected with each other was beautiful. The project took little explanation due to the fabulous soundscape created to play alongside it and was unfortunately a very relatable topic for most attendees. But the results were incredible, so many people added their handprints to the mural and covered our thoughts and fears with an array of bright, bold and fantastical colours to make something beautiful out of something so sombre.

 

 

The mural now resides in Bramley with the girls group serving as a memory for the struggles we as women face still to this day. Feeling safe walking alone should not be a privilege, it should be a basic human right. But until that day, this mural serves as a reminder that at the very least, we are all in this together.