Modern slavery murals can play an important role in the fight to end modern slavery, according to a new report written by academics from the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham.
Coinciding with the United States' National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, the report, "Painting Towards Freedom: the Power of Murals and Street Art for Modern Antislavery", highlights how communities around the world are using this form of art to create slavery-free identities for their cities in ways that are accessible to all.
Part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Global Challenges Research Fund (AHRC/GCRF) project, "The Anti-Slavery Knowledge Network", the report draws from the Rights Lab's online collection Imagining Freedom. Launched last year, it is the world's first large collection of murals focused on modern slavery and human trafficking.
Uncovering the spread, purpose, and functions of antislavery murals across the globe, the report analyses modern slavery murals for their themes and functions, then uses four case studies from the United Kingdom, the United States, India, and Africa to assess the role of murals in community-based antislavery work
It finds that murals perform a multitude of activist functions, including:
- Raising awareness for a specific solution
- Offering a physical site for activist groups conducting events and rallies
- Involving survivors of modern slavery
- Signalling the presence of activist organisations and antislavery work in the area
The report shows that murals function as sites of activism by catalysing community action at their physical sites, and by creating a sense of a global antislavery culture that extends into streets and communities. Their presence helps to create a narrative of empowerment over one of victimisation.
The report provides suggestions on how artists, NGOs, local community partnerships, city councils, schools and other mural sponsors can best use this form of antislavery visual culture.
The recommendations made in the report include:
- Focus on the potential of local murals to communicate context-specific solutions and information, rather than general awareness-raising and emotional appeal;
- Choose sites that have the potential to become spaces for community meetings and events;
- Work to engage survivors of slavery in the creation of murals, so that this expert input forms the message and aesthetic of the final output;
- Connect the creation of their mural with existing and planned community-based antislavery work, including by engaging modern slavery city/country partnerships and taskforces in the UK and the US, or NGO networks in other countries, so that each new mural can help to cement a city's identity as one working to become slavery-free.
What we see in this report is the power of murals and street art to bring together local communities and provide a jumping-off point for community education. It shows that as our global antislavery community works towards a slavery-free world by 2030, artists have a key role to play locally in helping to build slavery-free communities. I would like to see an antislavery mural in every city!
