Art and community in the UK

Illustration by Ximena Astudillo Delgado via femiñetas

Contributors

Emmanuelle Andrews and Jake Lake

Summary

It doesn’t take long, glancing at recent back-copies of Britain’s daily newspapers, to find headlines proclaiming that “knife crime” is out of control in the UK – that British streets are no longer safe, and that something must be done to crack down on an “epidemic” of youth violence. In response, those in power wheel out “tough on crime” rhetoric and unveil new policing practices that disproportionately target Black communities. In this way, so-called “serious violence” sits at the heart of racist British policing: it fuels the expansion of police powers that are so often used to inflict harm on Black communities, criminalizing Black friendships, cultural expression and daily life, all in the name of keeping communities “safe”. In so doing, it fails to respond to the root causes of the issue: government neglect, runaway inequality, poverty and a myriad of other factors that have created a situation in which violence occurs and young people experience harm – including death – as a result.

Using the work of Art Against Knives as an example of a trauma-informed, arts and human rights-based approach, the authors demonstrate how non-policing alternatives are better placed to respond to the root causes of violence and how we must turn to community-led responses, rather than police and criminal justice solutions, to support young people’s lives in the present and the future. They argue that non-policing solutions such as these, grounded in care, solidarity and trust, must go hand in hand with efforts to roll back police powers and speak out against the harms of the criminal justice system as a whole.

The over-policing of Black communities in the UK

The over-policing of Black communities in the UK is not a new phenomenon. Black organizers¹, grassroots groups² and academics³ have long acknowledged how the state whips up and weaponizes public fears over crime to target and further marginalize oppressed groups. From the “mugging crisis” in the 1970s to contemporary characterizations of asylum seekers, notions of criminality are often the axis around which toxic, racist narratives turn.

Although difficult to locate in a temporal sense, the 2011 London Riots – triggered by the police killing of a young man named Mark Duggan – provide a useful jumping-off point that can help articulate how a narrative about “gangs” has become so consolidated in the British public’s imagination. To protest the killing, 200 people proceeded to march to their local police station in the London borough of Tottenham. This quickly grew into a multi-day mass uprising on streets across the nation, in what commentators have called the largest civil unrest in a generation.⁴

Rather than contextualizing the uprisings as a response to the immediate circumstances of Duggan’s killing, police racism and brutality, or to wider state injustices such as poverty and cuts to public services, leading political figures and the media alike referred to “thuggery” and other racist, classist tropes, placing responsibility for what became known as the “London Riots” on violent “gangs”.⁵ This contradicted the government’s own admission at the time,⁶as well as contemporary academic research that proved “gangs” were not a significant factor in the events that took place in August 2011.⁷

The work of “gangs policing”

The UK government’s approach, driven by the impulse to identify (or rather, manufacture) and disrupt the lifecycle of a “gang” member, and to wage a war on “gangs”, “serious violence” and drugs, has served to justify harmful police practices, all in the name of safety, prevention, security and reinstituting “law and order” on the streets of Britain.

In reality, what has occurred is the over-policing of Black and working class communities – and young Black men and boys in particular. Various tools have been used for this function, including the London Metropolitan Police’s gangs violence matrix, a database that was finally found to be unlawful in 2022 and was controversial for how it listed predominantly Black people because of who their friends were, where they lived or their status as victims of crime.⁸ This resulted in serious and potentially life-changing consequences when that data was shared with other public bodies such as the Home Office, local authorities, the Department of Work and Pensions, housing providers, schools and the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency.⁹

Other tactics that have emerged in the name of ending “gang” violence have included banning young Black boys from cultural events like Manchester Carnival,¹⁰ characterizing Black friendships as inherently dangerous through racist narratives about drill music¹¹ and sweeping countless Black people into the criminal justice system through joint enterprise prosecutions, at 16 times the rate of their white counterparts.¹²These and other initiatives have caused immeasurable harm to impacted communities, widening the net of criminalization and plummeting young Black men and boys further into cycles of harm.

Identifying the discourse that the state relies upon and subsequently amplifies is important, since it is these narratives that go on to shape and justify policy interventions. In the case of “crime” it is particularly urgent, because these concepts go on to direct the tenor of policing and the criminal justice system, which have the ability to drastically change a person’s life.

Illustration by Ximena Astudillo Delgado via femiñetas

Identifying the discourse that the state relies upon and subsequently amplifies is important, since it is these narratives that go on to shape and justify policy interventions.

“Crime” itself cannot be taken as a stable concept: during the London Riots, images of groups of people stealing television sets were not read as an indictment of years of austerity and the aftermath of the financial crash of 2008, or as an articulation of poverty or a protest against capitalism and consumerism. To do so would necessitate that the government take responsibility. Rather, such images were taken as evidence of a breakdown in law and order and of the rise in criminal gangs. Gang narratives, and their cultural identifiers and tropes (from clothing to words and music) are useful for the state; they are “politically deployed in order to convey a ‘fabrication of social order’ through an authoritarianism driven by the pre-emptive pursuit and the violent criminalisation of the transmogrifying Black criminal ‘other’”.¹³

The harms of traditional responses to “serious violence” and “gangs” in the UK

The stakes of dealing with the notion of “serious violence” as it has been cemented in the public imagination are high, and there have been harmful consequences, not least on the ability to prevent genuinely serious violence from occurring.

As academic Elaine Williams describes, “the generational impacts of advanced neoliberalism have intensified conflict between marginalised young people in the UK as they compete for success in high-risk informal economies and navigate the normalised brutalities of everyday violence. However, the impact of extreme inequality and structural violence on children has not been central in the response to youth-on-youth knife homicides in the 2000s and 2010s. Instead, these decades have been characterised by punitiveness and surveillance, increasing discriminatory stop and search practices and extending powers that target and control young people.”¹⁴ Violence, in other words, is a symptom of wider systemic injustice, which is further fuelled and exacerbated by state neglect. And yet, “for all the talk of ‘tackling knife crime’ we’ve seen very little change in rates of violence and homicide against young people”.¹⁵

At one of the sharpest ends of the state’s approach to “serious violence” and “gangs” is the experience of men and boys like Mark Duggan, who have died at the hands of the police. For 40 years, groups like INQUEST have taken on specialist casework responding to the tragic deaths of people in state custody – including police and prison custody, immigration detention, mental health settings and deaths involving multi-agency failings or where wider issues of state and corporate accountability are in question.¹⁶ Black communities are also subjected to daily violence in various other ways. In 2020 a Black schoolgirl, “Child Q”, was strip-searched at school by police officers during her period. She was suspected of smelling of, and possessing, cannabis; nothing was found on her. Even if drugs had been found, we are clearly already failing young people when our reaction to suspicion is to subject them to invasive and dangerous police interactions, rather than to question our racial biases or lend a listening and caring ear to a young person who might need support. Indeed, the review into her experience, led by the City & Hackney Independent Child Safeguarding Commissioner and a senior professional adviser, stated that racism was “likely to have been an influencing factor in the decision to undertake a strip search”, and “the review and reference panel also held a firm view that had Child Q not been Black, then her experiences are unlikely to have been the same”.¹⁷

We are clearly already failing young people when our reaction to suspicion is to subject them to invasive and dangerous police interactions, rather than to question our racial biases or lend a listening and caring ear to a young person who might need support.

Policing can also exacerbate the violence affecting young Black people, fuel racism and put Black communities in harm’s way. One clear example of this is the UK’s approach to drugs policing. As described by campaign group Release, the UK’s drugs framework is “ineffective and fails in its own stated aim to reduce or eliminate drug use. Instead, drug policy, fuelled as it is by the criminal justice system, provides the architecture for racial and social control in society.¹⁸From practices of stop and search (over 60% of which are for drugs) to the heightening of risks around drug use thanks to the looming threat of detection, criminalization and punishment, drugs policing fuels race disparity. Pushing the market underground also exacerbates the physical harm of drugs themselves, by making them unsafe due to adulterants, among other risks. Decriminalizing drugs could free up funding to be reinvested elsewhere, from trauma services and mental health counselling to safer locations for drug use.

Decriminalizing drugs could free up funding to be reinvested elsewhere, from trauma services and mental health counselling to safer locations for drug use.

Though far less discussed, the consequences and causes of serious violence are human rights issues, since violence can lead to serious injury or death, and those who survive may face long-term physical disability.¹⁹ Experiencing or witnessing violence can have a profound impact on people’s wellbeing and mental health. People who experience trauma may suffer from anxiety, paranoia and depression. They may need lasting care where mental health issues are exacerbated by chronic or intergenerational trauma stemming from exposure to violence, as well as structural factors that impact wellbeing such as poverty²⁰ and discrimination.²¹ Patterns of persistent violence, coupled with systemic social exclusion, can isolate communities, erode trust in the authorities, and potentially inhibit access to services such as health, housing and education.²²

After decades of failed promises of police reform, as well as policing being the subject of increased scrutiny, it is vital that police powers are rolled back and decentred from conversations about the solutions to social issues, in order to materially protect communities from state violence.

Alternative solutions: tackling the root causes

While the causes of violence are notoriously complex, literature identifies inequality, racism and gender injustice,²³ social exclusion and inadequate service provision,²⁴ adverse childhood environments and domestic violence,²⁵ and trauma²⁶ as drivers of violence, to name a few. Nonetheless, the tactics the state utilizes in response woefully misconstrue this complexity, and inherently take a punitive approach, directed towards a community of young, Black men – while failing to take meaningful action to tackle the root causes of violence and harm.

Young people face barriers to feeling safe and reaching their potential. Their situations are characterised by poverty, complex home lives, a discriminatory education system, and a risk of exploitation.

As Art Against Knives (AAK) describe in their contribution to Holding Our Own: non-policing solutions to “serious violence”, alternative solutions must address those root causes, as well as understanding how the failure to do so itself is a violence. They say:

Violence is part of everyday life. Severe funding cuts have resulted in reduced youth provision and services being at capacity, with limited access to informal creative, social, and learning opportunities. Poverty and inequality are rising. Areas where AAK operates are among the 12% most deprived in England – socially isolated with poor transport links and low-quality built environments.

Young people face barriers to feeling safe and reaching their potential. Their situations are characterised by poverty, complex home lives, a discriminatory education system, and a risk of exploitation. In the absence of positive role models, they are exposed to violent networks. Barnet adolescents demonstrate major vulnerabilities, including child poverty, criminal activity, missing episodes, substance misuse, presentation at multi-agency sexual exploitation panel, poor school attendance or not in education, employment or training, and being in care. Around 88% of AAK’s young people are from minority backgrounds, with these communities disproportionately affected by systemic risk factors.²⁷

In addition to reducing the direct interactions between police and Black communities through the rolling back of police powers, then, non-policing solutions must also include responses that take stock of the disadvantages that are faced by marginalized communities and that funnel them into the criminal justice system in the long term. Change absolutely needs to come from above: from more money towards reversing cuts to youth services and good education (including calling for an end to racist disciplinary practices like school exclusions, and better support for teachers dealing with the complex lives of young people) to ensuring that families have enough to get by. But spaces must also exist that enable people who experience violence and trauma (perpetuated by the state and otherwise) to heal, from equipping young people with knowledge about their rights in the face of police injustices to providing them with political education, and from providing young people with job skills to supporting their ability to flourish creatively. These are solutions that support, rather than harm, young people’s present and future, and it is often grassroots and community groups that fill this urgent gap.

Reframing safety and care

When I have the mandem with me I feel safe, I don’t worry about nothing.

When I get yard, I feel safe. Making it home every single day. When you get yard don’t you get gassed? We’re living in the trenches bro, you’re not guaranteed getting home every single day.

-Participants at Art Against Knives (2024)²⁸

It might be tempting to push back against the state’s construction of young people by sanitizing their experiences, but this too would replicate the state violence affecting them. Instead, we must do the work of consciously identifying mainstream narratives, while also turning them on their heads. The quotes provided above are a good example of this, for it is precisely these “mandem” that the state is trying to “protect” the public from. Rearticulating this perceived threat by centring young people’s experiences dismantles that narrative and is also one step closer to a future where young people can feel wholly seen.

Taking a closer look at AAK’s services, it is evident that what makes them so impactful for the young people who attend them is the range of services they provide, as well as the values and approach they take. AAK’s creative spaces are co-designed with young people and embedded in the community, providing training and specialist support, establishing trusted relationships, amplifying voices and effecting change in the systems around them. They build on existing skills and interests, empowering young people to make positive choices and putting them in control of their own futures, while breaking down barriers and inequalities that lead to violence.

In contrast to the alienating and harmful practices of mainstream responses to “gangs” and “serious violence”, groups like AAK honour trust as key to their approach. By co-producing their programmes, they enable young people to shape the support they need. By building trusted relationships, participants actively engage in the programme, unlike many statutory services. AAK participants “seek our support when they face significant risks and challenges. This has proven critical for young people who might be at risk of serious violence. One of our young people told us: ‘It’s just a place for everyone to get together. They’re here for you pretty much. They want the best for you.’ As another said, ‘If you’ve had a stressful day, you can come here and talk to these lot. Man can come and cause a chaos and headache here yeah, but these ones still love me and I have the same love for them.’”

With the criminalization of drill music, freedom of expression is another site that policing and criminal justice continue to extend their reach into. Rather than mirror this threat, AAK have reclaimed creative spaces, with the belief that creativity is an antidote to and a route out of – rather than a precursor to – violence. One of the projects through which they do this is their podcast, One Mic Real Talk. ²⁹ Here, young presenters take listeners on a journey through the issues they face in society, ranging from discussing mental health, the education system and music and culture to facing up to Britain as it really is, from what happens on the streets to what happens in Parliament. Providing a space for young people to express themselves empowers them to talk about the issues affecting them and to establish strong relationships and kinship ties with each other. Reflecting on the impact of their voices being nurtured and valued, two of the young people involved said, “it’s a safe space to express ourselves through creativity” and, “it’s like a second home”.

Finally, as identified above, risk factors for violence affecting communities include issues such as economic instability, unemployment and deprivation. The IN OUR HANDS Training Programme at AAK supports young women in overcoming barriers to employment both by upskilling them with a qualification in nail technology and by helping them to address other barriers to employment through a structured personal development programme delivered by the organization’s young persons violence adviser.

Tragically, in the effort to appear tough on crime, and to shield itself from problems it has helped to manufacture, the state has created a worsening situation of violence for many young people in the UK’s capital and beyond.

Once qualified, the technicians are offered the opportunity to be employed by AAK to deliver pop-up nail bars in both community and corporate settings across London. For many, this is their first experience of employment, providing them with the opportunity to increase their income and ability to independently support themselves and their families. One woman said, “the personal development sessions were my favourite, they really helped me with my self-belief and confidence. I learnt about the importance of self-care and looking after myself as well as my son.”

Perhaps the starkest reflection from an AAK participant is the understanding that “before the Totty [Tottenham] riots happened when there were a lot more youth clubs open, there were a lot more youths off the streets innit.” Tragically, in the effort to appear tough on crime, and to shield itself from problems it has helped to manufacture, the state has created a worsening situation of violence for many young people in the UK’s capital and beyond.

Conclusion

Central to the explicitly harmful methods the state uses to police, criminalize, surveil and harass Black communities are the narratives that underpin them. As such, it is important to critically interrogate the concepts of “gangs”, “serious violence” and other racist terms used by the state, in order to reveal them as tools that serve to justify the expansion of policing into predominantly Black communities, all in the name of safety, security and violence reduction. By recontextualizing violence as structural, including the practices waged by the state, we can better resist the expansion of harmful policing practices, while also demanding alternatives that get to the heart of the social issues affecting Black communities.

Spaces for young people like AAK, which work with participants in the long term and recognize that their needs cannot be met through one-off interventions, are a fine example of this. Groups like AAK, by taking a long-term, preventative and strengths-based approach and bringing trauma-informed safeguarding support to young people in a place and at a pace that works for them, not only reduce violence but also meet the needs of communities where they have been failed by the state. This demonstrates how practical non-policing solutions grounded in care, solidarity and trust must go hand in hand with efforts to roll back police powers and speak out against the harms of the criminal justice system as a whole.Illustration by Ximena Astudillo Delgado via femiñetas

Endnotes

1
Stafford Scott (2018), The War on Gangs or a War on Working Class Black Youths. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/65722367/the-war-on-gangs-or-a-war-on-working-class-black-youths
2
For example see Tottenham Rights https://www.tottenhamrights.org/ and 4Front https://www.4frontproject.org/
3
Stuart Hall (1978), Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order.
4
The Guardian and LSE (2011), Reading the Riots: Investigating England’s Summer of Disorder
5
The Independent (2011), London Riots Spiral Out of Control. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/london-riots-spiral-out-of-control-2333748.html
6
HM Government, (2011), Ending gang and youth violence: a cross-government report including further evidence and good practice case studies.
7
The Guardian and LSE (2011), Reading the Riots: Investigating England’s Summer of Disorder. https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46297/1/Reading%20the%20riots(published).pdf
8
Liberty (2022), Liberty challenges Met Police’s discriminatory gangs matrix. https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/issue/liberty-challenges-met-polices-discriminatory-gangs-matrix/
9
Amnesty (2018), Trapped in the Matrix: Secrecy, stigma, and bias in the Met’s Gangs Database. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/report/Trapped%20in%20the%20Matrix%20Amnesty%20report.pdf
10
Aamna Mohdin (2023), Manchester police stop carnival bans after legal threat over ‘racist targeting’. The Guardian.
11
Lambros Fatsis (2019), Policing the beats: The criminalisation of UK drill and grime music by the London Metropolitan Police. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0038026119842480?journalCode=sora. See also Art Not Evidence https://artnotevidence.org/
12
Liberty (2023), New figures reveal Black people 16 times more likely to be prosecuted under ‘racist’ joint enterprise laws. https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/issue/new-figures-reveal-black-people-16-times-more-likely-to-be-prosecuted-under-racist-joint-enterprise-laws/. See also Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association https://jengba.co.uk/
13
Insa Koch, Patrick Williams and Lauren Wroe (2023), ‘County lines’: racism, safeguarding and statecraft in Britain. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03063968231201325
14
Elaine Williams (2023), Policing the Crisis in the 21st Century; the making of “knife crime youths” in Britain.
15
Elaine Williams (2023), Policing the Crisis in the 21st Century; the making of “knife crime youths” in Britain.
16
See INQUEST, https://www.inquest.org.uk/.
17
Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (2022). https://chscp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Child-Q-PUBLISHED-14-March-22.pdf
18
”Release, ‘Organised Abandonment’, in Holding Our Own: A Guide to Non-Policing Solutions to ‘Serious Youth Violence’. https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/HoldingOurOwn_Digital-DoubleSpreads.pdf
19
See, for example, NHS Hospital Admissions data, https://www.england.nhs.uk/2019/02/teens-admitted-to-hospital/
20
For research on the link between poverty and mental health, see Mind, Facts and Figures about poverty and mental health, https://www.mind.org.uk/about-us/our-strategy/working-harder-for-people-facing-poverty/facts-and-figures-about-poverty-and-mental-health/#:~:text=Young%20people%20in%20the%20lowest,than%20those%20in%20the%20highest.&text=86%25%20of%20people%20sleeping%20rough,with%20a%20mental%20health%20problem. See also Sutton Trust (2023), New research reveals worrying links between poverty, mental health and GCSE grades. https://www.suttontrust.com/news-opinion/all-news-opinion/new-research-reveals-worrying-links-between-poverty-mental-health-and-gcse-grades/. See also Jed Boardman, Nisha Dogra and Peter Hindley (2015), Mental health and poverty in the UK – time for change?. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5618908/
21
There is a significant body of research which demonstrates that when people are chronically treated differently, unfairly or badly, it can have effects ranging from low self-esteem to a higher risk for developing stress-related disorders such as anxiety and depression. For a summary, see http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/discrimination-can-be-harmful-to-your-mental-health.
22
For a discussion of these impacts in the context of gun violence in the United States, see Amnesty International, (2018) In the Line of Fire: Human Rights and the US Gun Violence Crisis. www.amnestyusa.org/reports/endgunviolence
23
Theresa L. Armstead, Natalie Wilkins, Maury Nation (2019), Structural and social determinants of inequities in violence risk: A review of indicators. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7278040/. See also Mark A Bellis, Karen Hughes, Clare Perkins and Andrew Bennett (2012), Protecting people Promoting health. A public health approach to violence prevention for England. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/216977/Violence-prevention.pdf
24
HMICFRS, Young people’s experiences of serious youth violence: Care not criminalisation. https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/publication-html/young-peoples-experiences-of-serious-youth-violence/#solutions.
25
Nadia Butler, Zara Quigg, Mark A Bellis (2020), Cycles of violence in England and Wales: the contribution of childhood abuse to risk of violence revictimization in adulthood. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7667802/. See also Home Office (2015), Serious Violence Strategy. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/698009/serious-violence-strategy.pdf.
26
Frederick Butcher, Joseph D Galanek, Jeff M Kretschmar and Daniel Flannery, (2015), The impact of neighbourhood disorganization on neighbourhood exposure to violence, trauma symptoms, and social relationships among at-risk youth. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26477854/
27
Art Against Knives, “Young people setting the scene”, in Holding Our Own: a guide to non-policing solutions to “serious youth violence” (2023). https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/fundamental/holding-our-own-a-guide-to-non-policing-solutions-to-serious-youth-violence/
28
These quotes were collected as part of a workshop the authors held with AAK participants during the creation of Holding Our Own. Central to this work was disrupting narratives of “safety” and allowing young people to imagine their own alternatives.
29
Art Against Knives, One Mic, Real Talk. https://shows.acast.com/one-mic-real-talk

Contributors

Emmanuelle Andrews is a policy and campaigns manager at UK-based human rights organization Liberty. She works on policing, surveillance and non-policing solutions to social issues. She can be contacted at emmanullea@libertyhumanrights.org.uk.

Jake Lake works as policy, public health and prevention lead at MAC-UK, a mental health charity that works alongside young people and systems to develop alternatives to mental health and criminal incarceration. Jake supports the development of services that move away from traditional conceptions of “mental health” and “justice” and towards models that support young people to have autonomy and control over their own spaces and decisions normally made about them. MAC-UK supports the co-production of services and creates systems change through partnership work, including with Art Against Knives, a youth space that co-designs services with young people in the London borough of Barnet, where Jake is also a youth worker. He can be contacted at jake.lake@mac-uk.org.

Both Liberty and Art Against Knives were involved in the award-winning Holding Our Own campaign, which worked with youth groups, grassroots organizations and racial justice campaigners to explore the issue of non-policing alternatives to “serious violence.”

Art Against Knives, INQUEST, Kids of Colour, Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association, Liberty, Maslaha, National Survivor User Network, No More Exclusions, Northern Police Monitoring Project, Release (2023), Holding Our Own: a guide to non-policing solutions to “serious youth violence”. https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/fundamental/holding-our-own-a-guide-to-non-policing-solutions-to-serious-youth-violence/ .

Illustrations by: Ximena Astudillo Delgado via femiñetas

Ximena Astudillo Delgado holds a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts, specializing in photography, screen printing, engraving, and illustration. She works with analogue and digital techniques. She collaborates with national and international media, organizations, and artistic projects such as the campaign for the rights of domestic workers for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation; illustration for the Climate and Environmental Justice area for INCLO; the National Network of Women of Colombia with the campaign “Rowing Together for Peace”; the illustration for the book “Defenders. Life at the Center”, edited by the Siemenpuu Foundation, Action for Biodiversity, Chirimbote, and Marcha; the illustration and animation of “Neo extra activism. Protocols of good living” for the Etcétera Group. By the end of 2023, she was commissioned to illustrate one of the posters for the movie “Igualada”, and currently collaborates in the design and illustration for the Association “Women Workers of the Land”, a collective of rural women organized around rural feminism.

For several years, she has been living in Buenos Aires and, as a proud native of Cali, she is a fan of dancing salsa. She loves Sismo, her cat, who accompanies her in every project

femiñetas: feminism in vignettes. femiñetas is an illustrated and transoceanic collective and media. It comprises some 300 illustrators and writers from different parts of the world who form a story-telling community in the language of comics.

Flor Coll is the coordinator and founder of femiñetas. She is a journalist and Social Communication graduate from Universidad Nacional de Rosario (Argentina) and holds a Master’s in Gender and Communication from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). After working for more than 15 years as a journalist in Argentinian radio, TV and print media, she currently carries out gender and sexuality campaigns for the NGO Sexus and teaches at the Master’s in Communication and Gender at the Barcelona Open University in Spain (UAB). She co-created Chamana Comunicación, a consultancy firm based in Barcelona where she is the director of communication and capacity building.

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