A brightly decorated shipping container that is working to change the conversation on sexual violence has arrived in the Nickel City.
On Nov. 6, Sexual Assault: The Roadshow took up temporary residence at Victory Park on Frood Road. On Nov. 25, the International Day to End Violence Against Women, the Roadshow will open its shipping container doors to the public, from 11 a.m .to 4 p.m.
Since 2016, the 20x8 shipping container that houses the roadshow has travelled to 20 communities, spreading its message of using “art to talk back to sexual violence.”
Until Nov. 24, the Roadshow is offering groups and organizations that work with sex workers the opportunity to participate in workshops to help ensure programs and services being offered are relevant and accessible to sex workers.
From the description on the Roadshow webpage: “Sexual Assault: The Roadshow is a pop-up, participatory art gallery in a shipping container. It’s a community arts education project that will travel on a flatbed truck to fifteen cities/towns/areas in Ontario from 2016 to 2018. At each stop, we work in solidarity with local anti-violence agencies, artists and community participants to create, curate and exhibit art that “talks back” to sexual violence.”
It was created by author, educator and activitist Jane Doe and poet, activist and educator Lillian Allen, the project’s first artistic director who helped establish the design and vision of the Roadshow.
In Sudbury, the Roadshow is being hosted by the Sex Workers Advisory Network of Sudbury, a.k.a. SWANS, a sex worker-led non-profit organization in the city that works to support women in the sex industry by improving their overall health and wellbeing.
“We believe that Sex Workers are valuable contributing members of our community and are entitled to the same rights as all other human beings (and) we demand the full decriminalization of sex work in Canada,” SWANS said in a news release.
“Sex Work activists and allies work to establish awareness about sexual violence against their communities and how that violence impacts on their human and labour rights. Media headlines speak to the murder, rape and abuse those communities experience but seldom in a factual or political context. From Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) to #metoo, dialogue and awareness have increased about a subject historically clouded in stigma, fear and denial, especially for Sex Workers. The Roadshow is designed to further that dialogue and build awareness through art and its power to articulate what words cannot.”
Partnering with with Myths and Mirrors, our local community arts organization, and came together with Sarah King Gold (Multi Media Community Artist and Performer), Cait Mitchell (Media Artist) and Sarah Gartshore (Playwright and Director), SWANS created Project ArmHer out of “the frustration of systematically being silenced, spoken for and about, and purposely excluded from conversations about our work and our lives.”
The creaters’ goal with the Roadshow was to recognize the pain and horror of sexual violence and the intersections of criminalization, racism, colonialism, Transphobia and anti-immigration, but to imbue it with the “honour, joy and hope” needed to create change.
The public can visit the Roadshow — and even engage in a small art exercise of your own — on Nov. 25 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Sexual Assault: The Roadshow is funded by the Ontario Arts Council and sponsored by VtapeVtape.
