WELCOME TO THE UNDER PRESSURE? PROJECT
We are a group of Year 11 students who had the opportunity to work with a choreographer, a digital story-teller and an expert on young people’s relationship cultures.
We met up for 5 weekly 1 hour sessions to experiment with how the ‘forces’ curriculum in physics could help us with explore our feelings about relationships through sound and movement.
Can other areas of the curriculum help us explore our feelings about relationships?
Can we express ourselves without revealing too much?
Can we have fun exploring serious issues like consent, coercion and control?
What is a glitch?
In the digital world, when a machine has a fault, it is known as a gltich. A glitch is often understood as something that needs to be fixed.
What are Glitch Apps?
Glitch apps can randomly (pure-glitch) or intentionally (glitch-alike) manipulate and corrupt digital data which makes up images, videos and/or sounds.
What is Glitching?
Glitching can be a fun way to think differently about how you hear, see, think and engage with yourself, others and the world around you.
FORCES THAT MOVED US
We printed out the physics concepts on ‘forces’. They helped us think about how our relationships and interactions with others make us feel safe
and unsafe, happy and sad, controlled and free. We thought about what forces make some feelings or movements possible or impossible:
Elasticity: “when relationships become everybody else’s business”
Gravity: “carrying a worry” “feelings that hold you down”
Stopping distance: “knowing when to stop” “not going too far”
Atmospheric pressure: “when you’re pressured to do something” “when you feel judged”
Speed: “going too fast in a relationship”
We wrote down all the things we wanted to raise awareness of. The science concepts really helped us.
MOVING WITH FORCES
We moved our bodies and played with sound to experiment with our thoughts and feelings on forces.
The glitch app provided new ways for us to see and hear our sounds and movements. We created a performance to bring our feelings and concepts to life.
Watch our final piece here:
Under Pressure? from Emma Renold on Vimeo.
“If you’re not a talker you can show it through movement”
“We needed something like this”
“I loved making the sound-scapes with our voices”
“It gets you thinking about stuff”
This poem was created from all our spoken or written thoughts:
UNDER PRESSURE?
[FORCE]
Trapped
Can’t speak
Scared to tell
[PRESSURE]
Feelings and
emotions build up
inside ourselves
our bodies,
the universe
[GRAVITY]
A word
A look
A worry
Weighs us down
(SOCIAL) ATMOSPHERE
Relationships
become
everybody’s
business
Who to tell?
Who might judge?
Too embarrassed
[FRICTION]
Feeling stuck
Like it’s only
happened to us
Not knowing what
might happen
[SOLIDS, LIQUIDS and GASES]
Feelings can lift us up
and hold us down Pulled apart and divided like cells Vibrating against
each other
Feeling free and connected at the
same time
Bonded in our divisions
[CONSERVATION
OF ENERGY]
Feelings, like energy, will always flow
They are neither created nor destroyed
Always transforming from one form to another
Always connecting us Always more than us
Let’s work together with the forces that make movement possible
In our relationships
In our lives
For our futures
“you didn’t know you could move in a certain way!”
“you learn things through your body”
“it was really fun”
“it really helped bring things to life”
“Sometimes it’s hard to talk about personal stuff. The workshops helped us express and share our feelings with others, without having to name them out loud“
What is a healthy relationship?
Check out #lovedontfeelbad and the Womens Aid interactive guide to healthy relationships:
Find out what makes a healthy relationship
Is this a healthy relationship?
Myths about coercive control and domestic abuse
Everything you need to know about coercive control
What the law says about coercive control
Download this Live Fear Free poster on unhealthy and healthy relationships
How can the arts help promote healthy relationships?
TENDER www.tender.org.uk
Tender is a charity that works to promote healthy relationships based on equality and respect. They use theatre and the arts to engage young people in violence prevention and enabling them to recognize and avoid abuse and violence.
Online support to help you understand relationship abuse, and how to take positive action if it’s happening to you.
The Hideout
This Is Abuse
Live Fear Free
Galop LGBT
Brook
Brook is a sexual health and wellbeing charity that works in primary and secondary schools to teach children and young people about sex and relationships, including consent, healthy relationships, sexual harassment, sexting and more.
Download the case study here:
