Traumascapes works to change the ecosystem of trauma and create new horizons for survivors through
art and science.
Our work is bold, disruptive, and caring. It serves trauma survivors (individuals and groups who have been impacted by traumatic experiences such as, but not limited to, interpersonal abuse or systemic violence), persons and communities who support survivors, & professionals, organisations, and institutions who work on trauma and/or with survivors.
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As a purpose-driven community organisation, we are intentional about using our work to influence lasting societal change.
Living Expertise
Art
Science
Arts-based Advocacy
Through art exhibitions, film screenings, public speaking, and media campaigns, we protect trauma survivors’ rights, powers, and joys; we raise awareness of trauma; we build solidarity and collective responsibility to end violence and abuse; and we rewrite the sociocultural narrative of trauma on survivors’ own terms.
Societal violence
Issue addressed:
We live in a world that normalises and precipitates violence, both interpersonal and systemic, where most people are ignorant to the pervasiveness of abuse and the impact of trauma. In this world, trauma survivors are commonly unseen or viewed as either helpless victims or powerless patients.
Our Workstreams
We combine lived/living expertise, art, and science into four workstreams that tackle four pressing issues.
Research & Creative Outputs
Through interdisciplinary research that is led by survivors and guided by lived expertise, we work to gain a deeper understanding of trauma and to develop new trauma-sensitive approaches to support trauma healing and restore survivors' power. We also develop new methodologies and approaches to research that serve epistemic justice and that are survivor-defined, trauma-informed, ethical, and creative. Lastly, we design and produce creative research outputs in order to support the sharing of research findings beyond academia and make knowledge more accessible.
Issue addressed:
Unanswered questions &
missing solutions
Significant advances in psychology and neuroscience have enabled a growing understanding of trauma, yet many more questions remain unanswered and there is a clear need for new effective interventions to be developed. Additionally, a great proportion of research on trauma is conducted by non-survivors or without being informed by lived experience, which leads to outcomes that are not necessarily relevant or important to trauma survivors.
Training & Consultancy
Through trainings, courses, and educational resources, we support trauma survivors’ understanding of their experience and contribute to their self-empowerment and healing, and we equip individuals, professionals, organisations, and institutions with the knowledge to understand trauma and the skills to work sensitively and effectively with trauma survivors. Through consultancy services, we offer bespoke expert advice on trauma-sensitive practice in art, research, clinical practice, and other work related to trauma and/or involving survivors.
Knowledge deprivation & insufficient expertise
Issue addressed:
Though slowly on the increase, trauma knowledge and resources are not readily available and an understanding of trauma is still broadly lacking beyond its specialist field. Trauma survivors typically do not have the knowledge needed to recognise, understand, and navigate their experiences. Not all professionals and organisations who work with or support survivors know how to sensitively and effectively work with trauma, even when the will is present. Clinicians, researchers, and artists, for example, often struggle to apply trauma-informed principles and/or safely and meaningfully engage, collaborate with, consult, or involve trauma survivors in their work. This can lead to missed opportunities, loss of potential, inadvertent harm, and re-traumatisation.
Trauma-sensitive & Therapeutic Arts
Through survivor-led, trauma-focused, and trauma-sensitive creative workshops and programmes, we write a new healing narrative by and for survivors. We support survivors to harness the power of creative practices to explore, express, process, and (re-)imagine trauma and we support them to reconnect with themselves and others, nurture their power, heal, and reclaim authorship of their stories and ownership of their lives.
Issue addressed:
Survivor isolation & treatment misprovision
Survivors are isolated and often marginalised, having to navigate the harrowing reality of trauma on their own with little to no support. Additionally, though trauma is a ‘psychophysical experience, even when the traumatic event causes no direct bodily harm’ (Rothschild, 2000), mainstream therapeutic approaches are predominantly talk-based and do not directly address the embodied experience of trauma. Additionally, access to therapy is problematic. Most survivors do not receive support and those who do have to wait several months for it. According to Mind, 58% of people are not offered a choice in the type of therapy they receive, 50% feel that the number of sessions are not enough, and only 10% of people feel that their cultural needs are taken into account. These issues are reflected in survivors’ mistrust in and complaints of the unsuitability of mainstream treatments and their call for trauma-informed, anti-oppressive, and culturally-sensitive practices.
It’s time for a new narrative of trauma.
