We are Ruby, Lannie and Keira. We live in Hartcliffe and are studying for our GCSEs.
In the summer of 2021, we went to a holiday activity looking at social action for young people and we ended up forming SAFE. Social Action for Everyone. SAFE is a group for young people who are interested in taking action in their community.
When we were talking about what focus we wanted for our group we talked about rape culture and issues that face young women in particular. We know women often feel unsafe to walk alone in our community so we wanted to take a stand, raise awareness, and let people know they aren’t alone.
We planned the first take back the night walk to happen in Hartcliffe. We spent many weeks preparing - writing a risk assessment, planning the route, designing posters and logos, finding funding to support the event, doing lots of promotion and publicity and even recording a pod cast!
The walk happened on 19 March 2021. We were nervous on the day but excited. People started to arrive at around 5 and we made banners and did face painting. The atmosphere was busy, happy and there were lots of people who wouldn’t normally have met, having a chat.
We set off on our planned route around Hartcliffe at 6.30, with about 45 people, adults, and children, with balloons and music. We got lots of support from people as we walked with passing cars beeping their horns and people coming out of their houses to find out what we were doing. There was even a Bristol post reporter who wrote two positive articles (before and during!) That doesn’t happen often for our community!
Feedback has been really positive – people who weren’t even here (like Lannie’s maths teacher) have praised us for the event. Sam and Zak who support us have got lots of calls from people to find out more about it.
Keira is keen to get involved in other similar events in the city, such as protests on College Green focussed on violence against women.
We also recently met the Mayor to talk to him about what it's like for young people living in Bristol and we challenged him on inequity in the education system in Bristol. We’re hoping to continue this conversation with the mayor in the future with a visit to City Hall.
We learned a lot doing this event and we have ideas for how to make future events more successful, like better publicity, and holding a conversation to discuss the issues before the event with people attending so we are getting our message out more clearly. We feel like the event really helped our self-confidence and we now feel more comfortable talking to groups of people.
For our group we’re hoping to get some new members and plan more events on issues important to us in the future.
To find out more come along to one of our sessions – we meet every Monday 5.30 – 6.30 (term time only) at the @Symes community room.
