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Content warning: indirect discussion of sexual violence

The Student Commission on Sexual Violence took the real-world, lived experiences of the Students that form it, and working with Leaders Unlocked and Ankita Saxena created a powerful spoken word piece that illustrates the daily experiences. The aim is to help create conversation and awareness about who is affected by this behaviour, and how much it can damage lives. The end goal is to be part of reducing sexual violence by making the conversations around it unavoidable.

My role was to translate this poem into animated form, taking the experiences shared within it and representing them visually in a way that transmitted the horror of the experiences, without being explicit, and respecting the voices of those that had shared their stories.

It was important to me to ensure that the piece reflected the range of different experiences through different styles, but also making sure that everything hung together as one cohesive experience.

Through the look development process an inky, collage-y feel emerged as a throughline for representing the feelings of oppression and upset that these situations cause every day. Each individual vignette can stand alone, but they also tie together into an anthology of sorts.

Set to the students' own voices, the animation became a propulsive journey through the different worlds that individuals face, the wide range helping to increase the chance of something resonating with the viewer.

The film has been shared and used in workshops around the country to help educate and inform around the issues raised.

It was once again an honour to be entrusted with helping to share the Commissioners' experiences.