Changing Relations

Such a lush session at the other week supported by our fab curator .

It was a real pleasure to work with committed staff and students from the college to help them plan their HB🩵 festival for the next academic year.

Here you can see us going through our art-filled newspaper What's All the Fuss About to select images for inclusion in an exhibition that we will be installing in college in the Autumn. The group were really clear about the messages they wanted to promote and it was wonderful for us to have an opportunity to bring this gorgeous content back to life.

This content was originally commissioned by the Student Social Action Group working on our Let's Talk About S*x project.

Young people from and highlighted what had been missing in their school S*x Education and the problematic sexual attitudes and behaviours they wanted to challenge.

They chose artists .hope and Beka Haytch (https://bekahaytch.uk) to capture what they wanted to share with their peers.

You can read about the original project on our website (where you can also find a link to the digital exhibition featuring the artworks) -

https://changingrelations.co.uk/how-we-help/projects/lets-talk-about-sex/

Thank you very much for inviting us back!

Getting excited to meet the fab candidates who applied to join our board at Redhills Durham this Friday.

They'll be browsing our resources, sharing a cuppa with & as we get to know each other.

Can't wait to be able to say who will be coming on board (which will, needless to say, be announced through the medium of illustration!)!

This is a really important moment for us as we build up our board ready to start the journey from CIC to CIO. Cross your fingers for us folks!

With thanks to for these lovely images from our Us Too project which aimed to highlight the diversity of people affected by domestic abuse.

Our 2 new Navigating Vulnerability workshops are live to book folks.

These pilot workshops will create an engaging reflective space to support:

💞 frontline practitioners to develop their practice around holding the emotional load of others (Wed 15 July)

💞 managers to enhance support structures to protect the wellbeing of staff navigating participant vulnerabilities (Thu 16 July)

These workshops will draw from interviews we have undertaken with people in a range of roles whose work, in one way or another, involves holding the emotional load of others. We spoke to professionals within domestic abuse specialist support, the wider voluntary sector, the culture sector, as well as those working in schools and university settings.

Illustrator has created a series of images that visually represent the key themes that emerged to provide an engaging way in to these rich and varied conversations.

Whilst each workshop will focus on the perspective relevant to the target audience of frontline practitioners and managers respectively, both will create an opportunity to:

💡 Identify the contexts, tasks and roles that involve emotional load and what that can look like

💡 Acknowledge the implications - both practical and personal - of this kind of work, including where practitioners may hold their own challenging lived experience

💡 Embrace the value of such lived experience

💡 Explore boundary-setting and what is needed to facilitate this

💡 Consider a range of coping strategies, processing frameworks and support structures

We are keen to understand the value that practitioners and managers from different sectors take from this workshop and what else we could develop to support those who are navigating vulnerability in their work.

This work has been developed with support from

📆 Workshop for practitioners - Wed 15 July 12.30-2.30pm - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1989317004712

📆 Workshop for managers - Thu 16 July 12.30-2.30pm - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1989317549341

Looking forward to seeing you there!

(links in bio)

We've always been conscious that working with challenging themes such as domestic abuse & sexual consent involves carrying a heavy emotional load for practitioners, particularly where this results in participant disclosures & where practitioners are navigating the weight of their own difficult lived experience.

It's why our Artistic Director@kategormanjewel is so passionate about bringing a care-based practice to our project management.

But over time, we have observed - across the various sectors we engage in - that the practice of recognising & consciously working to support those whose roles involve carrying an emotional load, is patchy.

We've seen some amazing practice.

We're also conscious of many gaps, of an inconsistency in funders recognising this aspect of the work they are supporting, of culture sector freelancers falling through the cracks & left to manage the load of others once a project has ended, of those at the top of organisations carrying a huge weight of the vulnerability passed up the tree from participant to practitioner to manager & not necessarily having clear pathways to ensure they too are fine.

So we decided to tackle it head on.

Over the last month, we have been interviewing people in a range of roles from a range of sectors to understand what it's like to carry emotional load in the work that you do & what personal coping strategies, frameworks & organisational structures & approaches enable them to keep on keeping on.

What we have gathered will have great value for practitioners navigating vulnerability on the frontline as well as those in management roles & we have planned 2 training sessions to pilot this content:

📆 Wednesday 15th July, 12.30-2.30pm for PRACTITIONERS
📆 Thursday 16th July, 12.30-2.30pm for MANAGERS

Keep your eyes peeled for booking links!

We're super grateful to for supporting this new development under our core theme of Inclusive Practice.

And to our lovely illustrator for throwing together this work-in-progress image before they dive into the interview content to visually represent the key emerging themes.

Lush workshop yesterday working with 's beautiful imagery around the theme of creating supportive workplace environments for staff who are navigating invisible disabilities.

Our lovely participants told us the session was "engaging, empowering, interesting, creative, accessible, open, thought-provoking, informative, safe, fun."

The booklet we worked so hard to create with support from support was really valued as a tool in its combination of testimony from those with lived experience of disability, together with impactful artwork visually representing the key themes that had emerged from the interviews we undertook.

If you would be interested in copies of the booklet for your workplace - or to support your own reflections on inclusive practice - or you would be interested in booking the workshop we have devised to give space for these valuable reflections - get in touch - [email protected]

Having some good chats with teachers at inclusion conference 😁

Getting ready for our stand at Schools North East Inclusion conference next week with some lovely new flyers about our schools workshop offers (thank you Megan Watson 🤩).

Looking forward to chatting to lots of teachers!

👋👋👋

Eeeeee!

Our new website is finally live!!!

This has been such a huge amount of work over a really long period of time.

Thanks so much to Vida Creative for making it look so fab 🤩

Take a look folks - https://changingrelations.co.uk/