Meraki Collective:
How our newest project is empowering
survivors of domestic violence
Storytelling is a powerful tool for raising awareness on social issues. A good storyteller will immerse the audience into the world that their imagination is being guided to create. We have used different forms of storytelling over the years, such as through writing, art therapy paintings and clay modelling. This time, for our newest project, Meraki Collective, we turned to the performing arts.
Survivors of domestic violence are attending sessions led by performer and tutor Ms Pamela Gauna from Mill Art Habitat. Here they are rediscovering their own personal connections to their creative free selves and their true identity. This in itself is a healing exercise because domestic violence erodes one’s sense of self. A survivor loses some of her identity over the years that she endures the violence because she’s not permitted to simply be herself when under the perpetrator’s ultimate control. Psychological violence forces a survivor into a dark place of self-doubt, feelings of worthlessness and fear, even if they were confident and healthy persons before they met their abusive partners.
With performing arts one can express themselves, push their boundaries and trust their bodies and voices through a variety of media. Dance, music, mime, improvisation, spoken word and lyric writing are all used to express different thoughts, memories, feelings and actions singularly or collectively. With the guidance of Ms Gauna, participants are creating scripts of movement and dance choreography to tell their own story of surviving and overcoming domestic violence. For some women, they are participating in these performing arts for the first time, after years of longing to try them and largely being unable to, due to their abusive partners. The choreography being created by the participants will eventually be performed by the tutor for a public audience. In this way, the tutor is the instrument through which survivors will be telling their story, giving full authentic ownership of the final product to them!
The second phase of this project involves the writing and recording of Empty Pages, a powerful song written and performed by Layla, a young survivor, with lyrics inspired by the process and the experience of the group. Kim Dalli, renowned Maltese actress, performs the Maltese spoken word part of the song.
See the lyrical video below raising awareness on different aspects of surviving domestic violence by telling survivors’ collective story of despair, courage, resilience and ultimately the celebration of new life chapters.
Survivors of domestic violence are attending sessions led by performer and tutor Ms Pamela Gauna from Mill Art Habitat. Here they are rediscovering their own personal connections to their creative free selves and their true identity. This in itself is a healing exercise because domestic violence erodes one’s sense of self. A survivor loses some of her identity over the years that she endures the violence because she’s not permitted to simply be herself when under the perpetrator’s ultimate control. Psychological violence forces a survivor into a dark place of self-doubt, feelings of worthlessness and fear, even if they were confident and healthy persons before they met their abusive partners.
With performing arts one can express themselves, push their boundaries and trust their bodies and voices through a variety of media. Dance, music, mime, improvisation, spoken word and lyric writing are all used to express different thoughts, memories, feelings and actions singularly or collectively. With the guidance of Ms Gauna, participants are creating scripts of movement and dance choreography to tell their own story of surviving and overcoming domestic violence. For some women, they are participating in these performing arts for the first time, after years of longing to try them and largely being unable to, due to their abusive partners. The choreography being created by the participants will eventually be performed by the tutor for a public audience. In this way, the tutor is the instrument through which survivors will be telling their story, giving full authentic ownership of the final product to them!
The second phase of this project involves the writing and recording of Empty Pages, a powerful song written and performed by Layla, a young survivor, with lyrics inspired by the process and the experience of the group. Kim Dalli, renowned Maltese actress, performs the Maltese spoken word part of the song.
See the lyrical video below raising awareness on different aspects of surviving domestic violence by telling survivors’ collective story of despair, courage, resilience and ultimately the celebration of new life chapters.
Empty Pages
A lyrical video for the original song Empty Pages, written by a young survivor, inspired by the process and experiences of other survivors participating in the performing arts project: The Meraki Collective.
