The story of the 'Together Against Gender-Based Violence' campaign
This campaign was one of the actions that came from the Morag Ross KC Report which launched in December 2022 and reviewed UofG‘s handling of Gender Based Violence. It set out that UofG would work closely with the Students’ Representative Council (SRC):
- To review our website content relating to ‘Gender Based Violence (GBV)
- Develop a University-wide campaign to communicate the different forms of GBV and how our community could access advice and support.
The development of the campaign has been shaped by a University-wide student and colleague partnership to develop the concepts, content and narrative, including a powerful art installation by Glasgow based artist and illustrator, Molly Hankinson. Thank you to everyone from our community who has helped develop the campaign through focus groups and consultation. One of our core aims was to reflect the thoughts and experiences of our community, as well as crucially, take a survivor-led approach.
'The Line'. By Molly Hankinson
Focus groups
In 2023, the Equality and Diversity Unit, External Relations and Students’ Representative Council (SRC) hosted a number of student and colleague focus group which covered many themes to be considered in our campaign.
- What forms of Gender-Based Violence do you think we need to highlight/address in a campaign?
- How can we improve our webpages to be more accessible and streamline information about GBV?
- What does the University need to do better in handling GBV cases?
- How and by what channels does our community want to access information about support and reporting GBV?
- What key messages would they like to see in an art installation as part of the campaign?
These focus groups gave the campaign team a strong sense of direction, on both the issues students and colleagues experienced, and the importance of having an impactful campaign which had to be seen as more than tokenistic. It was clear that a campaign needed to also show what progress had been made in the University’s handling of GBV cases and a strong commitment from UofG to do and be better.
Developing the campaign
The Campaign team took forward the ideas from the focus groups to update the support and reporting webpages, develop the creative and narrative for the campaign and work with the artist Molly Hankinson to inspire her art installation. The first phase of the campaign was launched to coincide with the UN’s 16 Days of Activism against GBV (25 November – 10 December), but the campaign will continue beyond the 16 Days.
Phase two of the campaign will include the development of posters to be launched in early 2024. This will allow the appropriate testing of messages with our student and colleague community to ensure they are reflective of people’s experiences.
The campaign will continue to evolve and be built upon in the coming months and years.
Events and Activities
Building on years of successful student activism against Gender-Based Violence, a key aim of our communications was to be an umbrella campaign for activities and events during the 16 Days, including a vigil and the Fight for the Night March.