Body Shining

Background For all partners, the call for this project stems from personal experience with body-shaming and a desire to be able to investigate and trace its sexist, racist, and classist roots. Body-shaming and body-related issues have often been highlighted as aspects of culture that young people wish to change or combat. Therefore, applying for a project such as Body Shining was considered a priority and an opportunity to test and further develop arts-based training tools to raise awareness and combat the act of body-shaming. Most forms of violence are often accompanied by acts of emotional violence in the form of humiliation and insults. They are often related to body and appearance as aspects of personality accessible to harassment. Based on our group work with youth and our work with professionals working with youth, we have noticed the lack of sufficient amount of tools and the lack of tools that are effectively adapted and tailored to the interests and needs of today's youth. This made the Body Shining project an opportunity to develop impactful and relevant tools for youth to intervene and prevent body-shaming. Objectives In the early stages, we were inspired to contribute to a new mapping of body-shaming phenomena in Europe. After collecting testimonies, we were motivated to take action to raise awareness of these phenomena and have a real impact on the local youth community; to facilitate understanding, analysis, and prevention of acts of body-shaming and body-related discrimination. In terms of our expertise, we wanted to explore the potential of art practices in raising awareness and combating body-shaming and to offer useful training tools for youth workers who wish to work on this issue. Our main goal was to develop a variety of activities and outputs (manuals and video tutorials) that differ from the usual methods of intervention and prevention in our context. Practices (in our case art practices) to awaken the interest of young people, to empower professionals working with young people, providing them with a variety of tools with which to open up and accompany young people in sensitive issues. And through the participants' personal experience to raise awareness and sensitivity to each other and to themselves in relation to the phenomenon of body-shaming. We have also created tools for deaf, disabled, and neurodiverse youth. Implementation IO1: Workshops to collect testimonials + online survey to collect more. Desktop research on representation of bodies (fat shaming, performing arts, theoretical research on the topic of hate speech, gender and bodies, ableism and the Impact of attitude) IO2: Development of 8 arts-based methodologies for the prevention of body-shaming. Workshops with young people and youth workers to test arts-based methods and tools for the prevention of body-shaming. Creation of 8 video-tutorials of the practices. IO3: Development of 8 arts-based methodologies with the aim of body acceptance. Workshops with young people and youth workers to test body acceptance methods. Each partner of 2 video-tutorials of the selected practices. IO5: Development of 8 practices on how to organise an art campaign. Co-creation workshops for the development of the art campaign in Paris, Bari, Belfast, Sofia and Larissa. Launch of the campaign and presentation of the art campaign performance in Larissa. Creation of a video documentary about the art campaign. Achievements IO1: Theoretical research on the topic of body-shaming + 200 testimonies from young people. IO2: 10 method sheets of art mediation to address the issue of body-shaming prevention. 2 video tutorials and 1 introductory video. 2 partner workshops. IO3: 2 art mediation method sheets on body acceptance for youth. 1 video tutorial on selected practice. 1 workshop per partner. IO5: 2 method sheets on art mediation. 1 video documentary. 1 event. 1 82-page manual. 3-day workshop per partner.