Who is popular today?

IN the wake of protest action against gender-based violence, the Together WI Foundation led by local designer Anya Ayoung-Chee reignited its 2017 Leave She Alone campaign. The campaign was inspired by Calypso Rose’s song of that year.
In a recent phone interview with Newsday, Ayoung-Chee discussed how local artistes can contribute to existing advocacy and the importance of amplifying the message.
Together WI is a community of local creative artists who contribute their unique skills, including graphic design, music production, and art, to various projects when the need arises. The foundation has been engaged in the ongoing anti gender-based violence campaigns in different ways, including the Leave She Alone campaign.
“The (creative) collective has been working in different ways over the years,” said Ayoung-Chee. “We’ve had to really identify where, as a group of creatives, we fit.
“Together WI’s whole approach to what we do is to leverage creativity to have a voice on the issues affecting the region.
“In the grand scheme of things, where there are extremely robust civic engagement groups that do this work on the ground as their life, I think our best role is to amplify those messages and that’s the intent of Leave She Alone: to be an advocacy campaign for the work being done by established organisations.”
She said she always tries to distinguish between her involvement as a concerned citizen adding her voice to the conversation and the established practitioners of the advocacy work being done on gender-based and domestic violence.
She said concerned women in the community have gathered to support these movements, and she is conscious that as a creative community, the foundation can create messaging and use that skillset to their advantage.
[caption id="attachment_878185" align="alignnone" width="275"] Calypso Rose's 2017 song, Leave She Alone, inspired Anya Ayoung-Chee's campaign against gender-based violence. -[/caption]
Leave She Alone flyers were printed in Newsday on March 8, which, she said, was a way of widely distributing placards that could be used in the many protests taking place.
Together WI also hosted a motorcade on March 7 from San Fernando to Port of Spain.
“The intent of that was to get creative about how we get people out."
Although recent events have led to continued protest action, Ayoung-Chee said the work has been going on for a long time.
“I think we’re always so quick to say Trinis are like a nine-day wonder, but clearly not in this case.
“I think there just comes a time in movements where there is a tipping point. For all intents and purposes, it is a good thing. It is for a horrible reason, but I hope those two women’s deaths are not in vain, and if this is what it spurred then we have to honour it.”
Ayoung-Chee said in years past, it would be organised and civic rights groups that would come out to protest, but she feels social media have contributed to engaging people beyond their usual communities.
“I just think covid19 has highlighted this shadow pandemic of domestic violence in general. There is an additional layer of uprising that has to do with people feeling a lot more angst in general.”
She hopes to continue using the skills of the creative community to promote these social issues and, eventually, partner more formally with one or several of the leading organisations in the movement to continue the work in collaboration, which she said would be more effective.
She said although the focus on Together WI at the moment is the Leave She Alone campaign, the team is also developing a livelihood project for migrant women, including teaching sewing and other production skills in partnership with the Living Water Community.
The project will include on-the-job training for these women, and she hopes it will eventually extend to women vulnerable to violence.
“We have to establish where we can best help, but I want to focus my work on livelihood and economic empowerment of women who need it."
She said the foundation will be working on that project in the coming months.
 
The post Artistes and advocacy: How creative artists contribute to social change appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.