The project
Play it for Change: Raising awareness and empowerment of girls and boys for the prevention of gender based violence through audio-visual media and music.
What’s the project about?
Play it for Change aims to educate youth through audio-visual media and music by encouraging their critical thinking skills and fostering their empowerment to prevent and combat gender-based violence.
Play it for Change addresses the priority of education and awareness-raising to prevent and combat GBV, in particular by changing attitudes and behaviours towards the phenomenon among girls and boys. It does so using an innovative approach based on audio-visual media & music that responds to youths’ interests.
Audio-visual media & music contribute to the construction of teenager’s gender identity and peer group affiliation.
Audio-visual media & music play an essential role in teenagers’ lives. On the one hand, they take up a large part of their leisure time. On the other, audio-visual media & music contribute to the construction of their gender identity and peer group affiliation.
However, audio-visual media & music rarely transmit the values of an equal and diverse society. Music videos usually sexualise and objectify women, while men are shown as hyper-masculine and sexually dominant. Youth often lack the tools to confront these representations critically. A comprehensive critical understanding of the media is less common among adolescents, thus Play it for Change urges them to respond this need and empowers them to negotiate, resist and counteract these messages. Instead of taking these messages for granted, it encourages adolescents to produce their own alternative ones.
Background on violence among teens
Play it for Change is intended to be highly innovative in its approach and the solutions proposed, providing educational spaces for the empowerment of youth, as well as addressing the potential and challenges of producing alternative audio-visual media & music committed to GVB prevention, and providing teachers with strategies to educate youth through participative and creative methods.
Data from different countries shows that psychological, sexual and psychical violence are common in dating among boys and girls, and that there is a strong correlation between adolescence and GBV.
For example, the results of the Spanish Macro Survey on Violence against Women (2015) show the high prevalence of psychological violence among girls. Jealousy is seen as something “normal” and a as a way to show love. At the EU level, the FRA carried out an EU-wide survey on violence against women (2014). One of the main conclusions is that 33% of women have suffered physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 15. Different international studies point to the worrying acceptance of GBV among youth all over the world.
According to FRA’s EU-wide survey on Violence against women, 33% of women had suffered physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 15
Educate and raise youth through audio-visual media and music, by encouraging their critical thinking and fostering their empowerment to prevent and combat GBV.
What will the project do?
Phases
Collection of evidence
Research on the attitudes of young people towards gender-based violence and gender stereotypes in music, through a questionnaire aimed at young people and discussion groups with both adolescents and teachers. Analysis and main conclusions will be included in national reports by country and also in a transnational comparative report.
Training for teachers
In this training activuty, we will work on gender-based violence and gender stereotypes in music & audio-visual media. The objective is to give tools to teachers so that they can work on the prevention of gender-based violence with their students in an innovative way.
Activities for young people
Awareness activities are aimed at adolescents and performed by previously trained teachers. This stage also includes workshops with artists and experts in the field. The goal is to create songs and videos that can be shared on the web and social networks.
Exchange of experiences
Students and teachers involved in the project will be able to exchange their experencies and music & audio-visual productions in a final gathering held in each participating country.