Resources
Intellectual Output #1
What does body shaming mean?
This book was produced as part of the “Body Shining” Erasmus plus project, which aims to offer youth workers and young people from different cultural/social backgrounds to raise awareness about the act of body shaming, enabling them to recognize, identify and prevent body shaming.
The book is based on stories – “incidents” – narrated by young people and our joint analysis of these incidents. It is divided into five chapters reflecting the different topics discussed in depth by the partners during the workshops held.
In the first chapter, MOH analyses body and fat shame, while Elan in the second chapter discusses the political body. Thanks to the contribution of Atypical, we face the topic of disabling bodies and the impact of the attitude. In the fourth chapter, Animus explain the hate speech phenomenon and the ways it reflects
on the body. Finally, in the last chapter, Smouth talks about the body in the performing arts.
During the workshops held in Bari, Belfast, Larissa, Paris and Sofia, the youngsters had the chance to:
- explore their own values;
- gain awareness of men, young with disabilities, migrants, LGBT, and young’s body shaming;
- gain the capacity to recognize when aesthetics/cultural differences trigger misunderstanding, tensions or conflict;
- be empowered through their increasing ability to do research, explore their own perceptions and find out more about other people’s attitudes and beliefs;
- become aware of the interpretations, assumptions, and preconceptions they form about others.
This book is useful for youth workers because it can serve to gain vocabulary used by young people; gain a better capacity to discuss concepts of body shaming and self-esteem and acquire the capacity to connect concepts and discussions to everyday professional challenges.
Finally, this book can be transferred to more formal education settings such as schools where teachers can also benefit from the book for raising awareness about body shaming and preventing it.
Intellectual Output #2
Toolkit for the prevention of Body Shaming
This toolkit was produced as part of the “Body Shining” Erasmus+ project. It aims at offering youth workers art-based training tools to facilitate their work concerning body-shaming phenomena among young people from different cultural and social backgrounds.
This book consists of a collection of methodologies developed by all 5 partner organisations. Each organisation developed and implemented 2 methodologies relating to the prevention of body-shaming phenomena in their own city. These workshops took place in Bari, Belfast, Larissa, Paris and Sofia with youth workers and youths participants either together or separately. Each organisation also implemented two methodologies, other than its own, developed by other partner organisations to check their function and potential in different settings.
The following collection of tools, the toolkit and the videos, will hopefully inspire and assist youth workers to bring up and raise awareness about the act of body-shaming in order to prevent such phenomena.
Available in other languages:
Bulgarian, French, Greek and Italian
Theoretical videos
Methodological videos
Tutorials on an art-based practice to prevent body shaming
Intellectual Output #3
Toolkit and art workshops for body acceptance
While IO2 focuses on creating pedagogical tools for prevention, IO3 focuses on pedagogical tools that can be used for youngsters who had experienced body shaming. We delivered a series of arts-based workshops with a core group of young people and developed a toolkit and videos about them.
The toolkit aims at offering youth workers art-based training tools to facilitate their workaround body acceptance for young people from different cultural and social backgrounds.
This book consists of a collection of methodologies developed by all 5 partner organisations. Each one of them developed and implemented 2 methodologies relating to encouraging body acceptance in their own city.
The collection of tools (toolkit and the videos) will hopefully inspire and assist youth workers to develop creative practices, discover strategies to encourage young people to own their bodies, gain awareness of how they are uncomfortable/comfortable within their bodies and encourage body acceptance.
This toolkit includes a guide on how to work with disabled people, looking at ways to create an accessible environment for youth workers and young people alike. The guide includes a terminology list when talking about disability.
Available in other languages:
Bulgarian, French, Greek and Italian
Soon available in Bulgarian!
Methodological videos
Tutorials on art workshops for body acceptance
Intellectual Output #5
Toolkit for artistic-campaigns to raise awareness on body shaming
This toolkit aims to equip youth workers with the skills necessary to prepare and create art campaigns with young people to raise awareness about body-shaming. The toolkit does not consist merely in an art-campaign event, but rather in the whole process of preparing for it together with the young participants (identifying the proper forms and channels, creating the materials, devising strategies to get in contact with the public and engage the public) running the campaign (creating the exhibition and the events surrounding it) and finally evaluating the impact of the campaign.
In this manual you will find tools to plan an art campaign on the topic of body shaming and especially body acceptance using artistic creation. You will go through understanding why an art campaign is a good tool in the fight against body shaming as it is a type of discrimination deeply rooted in representation and art is a wonderful way to question and propose new representations!
There are multiple means to answer this question and it is why you will find an eclectic overview of the ways we can address it. For instance, in Italy we analysed advertisements with a class of high schoolers and produced a film while in Greece we worked on a choreography presented in a public space for several weeks.
This manual also contains 10 activities using different forms of art you can do with your group in the perspective of an art campaign. Don’t hesitate digging some more artistic mediation ideas in our manual Toolkit and art workshops for body acceptance. The two manuals resonate with each other and some activities present here are in their continuity. For instance, Beyond the masks, by Animus, our bulgarian partner, is an activity that guides you in pushing further masks created in the context of the activity “Masks” by exploring the notion of shame and using role-playing.
Creating an art campaign on the topic of body shaming can be a powerful way to raise awareness, challenge so cietal norms, and promote body acceptance. Each partner organisation (ANIMUS, ATYPICAL, ELAN, MOH and SMOUTH) developed and implemented an artistic campaign with young people to raise awareness about body shaming in their own city. Watch the videos of all the art campaigns we created in Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy and Northern Ireland using different mediums.