By Us, For You

By Us, For You is a feminist survival guide created by women*, girls and non-binary people from Sandwell. It contains their contributions and stories about what it means to be safe and an instructional guide to essential self-defence moves. It is informed by a creative programme delivered during 2020 and 2021 by ROAAAR, a personal safety initiative that focuses on nurturing emotional and physical resilience; Blossoms Self-Defence; and Multistory. 

* This term is inclusive of all who identify as women, including trans, cis and femme.

The project was informed by ROAAAR, a personal safety initiative for women, girls and non-binary people that focuses on nurturing emotional and physical resilience through online and in-person self-defence workshops. Multistory collaborated with Ali Baskerville, artist and founder of ROAAAR to co-create a programme of workshops for local residents, incorporating their self-defence practice and creative storytelling as a means of exploring what it means to be safe.

The guide was launched in November 2021 at Bearwood Community Hub, where community members and participants collected their copy of the printed guide, shared food and took part in creative activities, with a performance by poet Jasmine Gardosi. The printed guide was gifted to project participants, local libraries and community centres and via ROAAAR workshops and will be available to everyone as a free, downloadable PDF. 

Thanks To Our Fantastic Collaborators

Participants: Assma, Bally, Dorota, Ekhlass, Esther, Fatima, Jackie, Jean, Kate, Kelly, Khalida, Leonie, Louise, Lorna, Pauline, Perm, Sandra, Sozan, Trish Additional Contributors: Danni Ebanks-Ingram, Ela Stapley, Jasmine Gardosi

ROAAAR Workshops: Fatima Ben

Illustration + Design: Byng

Thanks also to all those who took part in workshops and contributed their drawings or collages and to MotherShip Projects, Sandwell Visually Impaired and Kelly’s group at Sandwell Youth Service. Thank you to Sandwell Council and Arts Council England for their continued support of Multistory and to The Roger & Douglas Turner Charitable Trust for the project grant.

Alison Baskerville 

Alison Baskerville is a documentary photographer and artist. She has the desire and capacity to make work that reflects on important contemporary issues such as gender equality, military occupation, female identity in the forces, and the long-term consequences of armed conflict. Alison set up ROAAAR to provide basic personal safety sessions to womxn and non-binary people in Birmingham following the annual festival Powering the Matriarchy Together (P.M.T). ROAAAR is a personal safety training initiative that gives basic and easy to use tools to help you feel safe. Since then, ROAAAR has developed two strands of our work which focus on community safety workshops as well as safety sessions for the media.  They have facilitated a number of personal safety and self-defence sessions for World Press Photo, Women for Women (UK).