Art and storytelling offer modalities for dialogue with the beliefs, circumstances, and social conditions that perpetuate elder abuse. The Warm Safe Home Project is an arts-led primary prevention campaign employing the icon of the house to illuminate the intersection of ageism, family violence, and housing in elder abuse prevalence. While the term elder abuse can invoke alienating stereotypes, art and story make visible the unfortunate ordinariness of scenarios that violate the agency of older people. Developed in 2019 through the Victorian State Government’s Elder Abuse Prevention Network program, the Warm Safe Home Project has been delivered in various settings to thousands of people of all ages. It incorporates adaptable resources which can be accessed at no or little cost. This activity educates individual participants while generating social and intergenerational interactions that reinforce protective factors and culminate in public presentations that increase the profile of this intersectional form of family violence.
This 90 minute workshop takes participants on a journey through the story of the Warm Safe Home Project. This includes sharing photographic documentation as well as a tactile/visual display of paper houses created by artists and community members in the months prior. Participants will create their own series of paper houses while engaging with themes and questions introduced through storytelling. The workshop incorporates structured conversation that promotes consciousness raising as participants are supported to collectively investigate their own beliefs, biases, and observations in the context of the themes presented. Upon completion, participants will curate their own public display of houses as an entry point into the continuing dialogue for other conference attendees. This session will demonstrate the value of the arts as a means to identify, critique and disrupt cultural practices held in bodies, spaces, policies and systems that precede family violence.