Safe Spaces was a photo-voice project with seventh grade students a Swaziland and Durban school carried out by Relebohile Moletsane, Claudia Mitchell, and Kathleen Pithouse at a Durban primary school with Grade 7 learners. This project focused on issues around sexual abuse in school contexts. In single-sex groups of 3 learners set off to photograph safe spaces and unsafe spaces in and around the school. They were also asked to pose themselves’ when I feel strong’ and ‘when I don’t feel strong’ as well as when they felt safe and unsafe. In the last visit to the school, the groups sorted through their photos and chose some to display in mini-albums. They wrote captions for the photos and also wrote about their response to the experience of taking the photos. On the last visit, we gave each learner a colour photocopy collage of some of the photos - we made sure that each learner appeared somewhere in the collage. This year, we are going to go back to do some follow up work at the school.

Claudia Mitchell
Rebolilhe Molestane