The Wellcome Trust has awarded SHaME a “Research Enrichment – Public Engagement” award to run a series of Shameless! Festivals of Activism Against Sexual Violence in collaboration with The WOW Foundation.

SHaME is a research project exploring the role of medicine and psychiatry in sexual violence at London's Birkbeck University.

Shameless! Festivals will be exciting cross-arts events combining academic research, activism and art to confront sexual violence. The project, which will run for three years starting in 2021, will take place in the UK and Brazil. These festivals will bring together diverse communities of survivors and the expertise of researchers, medical, psychiatric and legal professionals, artists and activists in a transformative programme of talks, performances, workshops, ‘how to’ clinics, wellness spaces, and a schools’ programme.

Led by SHaME, WOW will work with the team to unite SHaME’s interdisciplinary research with our provocative and celebratory programming to create real impact in the lives of sexual violence survivors.

Shameless! aims to revolutionise conversations around sexual violence between survivors and professionals; burst open the constructed and inherited ideas of shame; and create an emboldening attitudinal shift from stigma to agency. Through the festivals we will aim to confront and dismantle the shame surrounding sexual violence, to create a collective, transformative shift within society and tangible impact for survivors, who will leave the festival with essential tools and knowledge to support their recovery.

More information and dates will be announced in the coming months.