Changing Relations

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Changing Relations We are an arts education and training company that provokes thinking around gender equality, gender

21/10/2026

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It's not easy making time to look after yourself but boy does it help when you do...

This term I've come back to both yoga and ADHD coaching and the space and perspective they each afford really helps.

What do you do to look after your well-being amidst the busy, busy, stress and pressure?

Fab new board induction day on Friday. Completely failed to photo document, so here's a gorgeous ceramic piece from our ...
19/10/2026

Fab new board induction day on Friday. Completely failed to photo document, so here's a gorgeous ceramic piece from our Stepping Out of the Box exhibition created by our former Artistic Director .turner_21.

We spent the day:

💥 getting to know one another in respect of the relational approach we've learnt to be invaluable;

💥exploring the organisational culture that saw us Highly Commended in last year's awards;

💥establishing the regional, political, economic, societal, sectoral and organisational context in which we're operating as the starting point for determining strategic direction;

💥making our first big directional decision as a new board!!!

It was such a pleasure to come away feeling they get it, they've got us and we're going to work well together.

So thank you enormously to Dale Glenister Dr .sarma and Kimberly Cullen for coming on board, to and for supporting the delivery of a really constructive day and to for once again hosting our activity. 🤩

here -I read such an interesting interview with Denise Brown, sister of Nicole Brown Simpson, who was murdered by her e...
16/10/2026

here -

I read such an interesting interview with Denise Brown, sister of Nicole Brown Simpson, who was murdered by her ex-husband, the former American football star OJ Simpson.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/oct/05/denise-brown-sister-nicole-brown-simpson-murder-oj-simpson

Her book "For My Sister Nicole" charts her learning about domestic abuse & how to support someone in your life experiencing this, from her recognition that, whilst on some level she knew something wasn't right in Nicole's relationship with OJ, she was "saying all the wrong things".

She references the persistent stereotype that domestic abuse "happens to poor people" as a barrier to recognising the abuse & posits that, if she had known then what she knows now, she "could have saved Nicole's life."

At the same time, I was reading a surprisingly beautiful book about coercive control - "Nesting" by Roisin O'Donnell - a powerful portrait of the "reduced space for action" coined by Evan Stark to describe the impact of coercive control on a victim's capacity to think outside of the immediate need to safety-manage the behaviour of their abusive partner, carefully calibrating their own behaviour to mitigate the risk of escalation.

I have to confess that, as I started reading it & recognised it was going to be a portrayal of domestic abuse, I had a moment of questioning whether I wanted to read something in much-needed "relaxation time" 100% on the theme of my day job. But it was such a beautiful, sensitive portrayal, it wove its spell around me & I couldn't put it down.

I concluded that it's a really important contribution to society's understanding of why it's so incredibly hard for survivors to "just leave." How can you find the space to make a plan when your own voice has been drowned out by the domination of an abusive partner crowding out your thoughts?

For anyone in the domestic abuse sphere looking for books that support understanding, I'd highly recommend.

Both feel very "on message" for the .org.uk conference we're contributing to today - a website focused on supporting family & friends of those affected by domestic abuse.

14/10/2026

Eeeeeeee! A is for Amy toolkits have arrived from the printers!

We are very excited at their general beautifulness!

And incredibly proud of all the work that has gone into getting them there!

👏 Lucy Engelhart 👏

Always useful to add fuel to the fire of ones motivation to do the work we do at Changing Relations.A brilliant pair of ...
12/10/2026

Always useful to add fuel to the fire of ones motivation to do the work we do at Changing Relations.

A brilliant pair of feminist writers featured at yesterday, expertly hosted by Durham University's Emeritus Professor Jane Macnaughton, drawing out the common threads in the work of the fabulous & .

What stood out to us was:

💡 The way seemingly disparate global issues such as the climate crisis & increasing political instability & violence can also be related to violence against women & girls, which tends to increase in the aftermath of disasters & when heat rises.

💡The idea that the individualist messaging of lean-in-style feminism places pressure on individual women to work harder to be fine / make an impact & obscures the reality that we're facing huge interconnected global crises & systems that require a collective effort.

💡Government emphasis on economic growth as the means to solve social problems is problematic when the unpaid care work that is mostly performed by women is not measured within the standard calculation of a given country's economic growth.

💡The p**n that has become increasingly mainstream privileges male entitlement to s*x & to a large extent, is more about power than pleasure, eroticising women's humiliation & degradation in a twisted reinforcement of old-fashioned patriarchal norms.

💡The frequent s*xual strangulation that is resulting from its normalisation within mainstream p**n has been seen in MRI scans to be giving young women brain damage. At the same time, a significant number of young men are saying that p**n is negatively impacting their lives.

And the one we need to help us not be entirely depressed by this picture:

💡 Patriarchy is not inevitable. If things have changed for the worst, that means it is possible for them to change for the better.

It wasn't easy listening. And we don't imagine it will be easy reading.

But it absolutely underlines the importance of the work we do in promoting healthy relationships, deconstructing gender norms and exploring healthy versus harmful s*xual attitudes and behaviours.

Next up, a little extract from our A is for Amy toolkit & a flavour of the impact of our test delivery with schools & yo...
09/10/2026

Next up, a little extract from our A is for Amy toolkit & a flavour of the impact of our test delivery with schools & youth groups earlier this year.

Our fab facilitators & delivered the programme to 202 young people across 2 secondary schools, 1 alternative education setting & 2 youth groups.

Participants included those with:

🩵 known lived experience of domestic abuse
🩵 SEMH needs
🩵 SEND need

We developed 3 variants of the programme, delivering:

🎬 the full programme over a period of weeks
🎬 a slightly shorter programme as a dropdown day
🎬 just a film showing followed by a Q&A

Whichever way we delivered it, there was a positive impact on the young people, but the most significant impact was for those who did the programme over a period of weeks:

💬 “I think on the 4th session, that's when it hit home, & it's like, oh goodness me, this is me, right – recognising themselves as the red flag.”

Evidence shows significant positive impacts on the young people:

💬 "I would be able to spot reg flags more now."

💬 "It would help people pick up tiny signs if their friends were in a relationship & it was unhealthy, they'd be able to give advice, give help..."

💬 “This has helped, particularly the young men…to really consider what it means to be a man.”

💬 “It gives them language to feeling already it wasn't right.”

💬 "I would tell the teacher if I was worried... I would support my friend & make sure she wasn’t alone."

This extract from the toolkit shows an example of a young person's depiction of "insta versus reality", a creative exercise we used to encourage them to reflect on the impression of Amy's relationship her friends might have from her positive-seeming social media posts and the way in which this contrasts with the reality of her experience of a controlling relationship.

We're so pleased to have welcomed a fab new cohort this week of Secondary school teachers, youth workers & other educational professionals who'll be using the A is for Amy programme with their young people over the next term 🤩

& have been busy this week delivering Background Knowledge CPD sessions for the educators who've signed up to receive ...
07/10/2026

& have been busy this week delivering Background Knowledge CPD sessions for the educators who've signed up to receive our A is for Amy & Sometimes it Hurts toolkits & trial delivery of our learning programmes next term.

So we thought we'd share a little glimpse inside the toolkits of the insights that came out of the test delivery where our lush creative practitioners ran the sessions with schools & youth groups.

First up: Sometimes it Hurts, our story series that features 6 fictionalised accounts of young people describing something that hurts in their home & its impact on their lives.

Here you can see a map created by a Y6 child who used colour & mark-making to depict Ted's world. We absolutely love the nuance & complexity of emotion & experience it shows this young person has developed through the programme.

Whilst the programme interrogates the experiences of fictional characters, imagine how empowering this would be for a young person who is experiencing something tricky, to find they now have the language to explain to a trusted adult what is happening for them.

Children said:

💬 “It’s easier for me to learn [with the story].”

💬 “Listening to the stories helps you understand... analysing the stories helps you understand more.”

Teachers said:

💬 "The children had a deep understanding of the different qualities that make a healthy or unhealthy relationship."

💬 "They felt more enabled to trust their judgement... an increased feeling of self belief in making decisions.“

💬 "Quieter children that don't normally speak up to the class were sharing their thoughts because they could relate to the content & that creativity."

💬 "Children demonstrated better self-expression & self-understanding: the first week, happy, sad, that was about it. By week 6, we had anxious, overwhelmed, furious, dysregulated & they still use those words."

💬 "It's given her confidence because she's been allowed to have some language to name her experience."

It's been a HUGE amount of work to pull these toolkits together (massive shout out to Lucy & Kate) but boy are we proud of what we have developed 🤩

here -I've been wanting to write about : the sickening news of gang r**e on campus. The even more sickening news that ...
05/10/2026

here -

I've been wanting to write about : the sickening news of gang r**e on campus. The even more sickening news that 50+ young men in a group chat neither challenged the offer to join in the r**e of a young woman too incapacitated to consent nor called the police to report this harmful, unlawful activity.

Then today, reports of the "horrifying" scale of child-on-child s*xual abuse in British schools:

⚖️ ~5 s*xual crimes against children aged 12 & younger were recorded by police every day in primary & secondary schools in England and Wales between 2021-25.

⚖️ 1 allegation of r**e at a school is received by police every day.

⚖️ More than 1/3 of these r**e victims were under 13.

⚖️ 2/3 were female.

[https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/oct/04/child-on-child-s*xual-abuse-schools-england-and-wales]

What does this tell us?

We MUST address harmful s*xual attitudes & behaviours as early as Primary.

Not just to prevent future cases like Cornell. We've got children far younger than University age behaving harmfully to other children.

For me, the most striking learning from cocreating our Weaving Stories of Peer Sexual Abuse animation was:

💡 The degree to which "low-level" behaviours are normalised, yet research suggests that settings where this level of activity is not addressed are the context in which more extreme incidences are more likely.

💡Our animation's emphasis on the impact of this behaviour helped young people recognise that "low-level" behaviours are not harmless.

💡The impact on the young people engaging in our animation was greater for boys.

If "boys are overwhelmingly the perpetrators" of harmful s*xual behaviour, even where other boys are the victims, it is critical that work that engages boys is funded.

We need to help them recognise what is happening & what is not acceptable, the impact it has & the ways they can respond if they see something a peer is doing that they now understand is likely to harm the person on the receiving end.

We cannot have our boys getting to Higher Education & not being ready to call out the harmful behaviour of their peers.

Image

We attended a really interesting webinar last week via the Teenage Relationship Abuse Community of Practice, convened by...
02/10/2026

We attended a really interesting webinar last week via the Teenage Relationship Abuse Community of Practice, convened by the .

So many of the key points rang true with the work we have been doing in this area over the last few years:

💡 That harmful behaviours are starting at a younger age.

💡That we need to see much earlier interventions before unhealthy behaviours go beyond normalised to entrenched.

💡That there is an intersection of the contexts in which harmful behaviours are being displayed, crossing between the privacy of intimate partner relationships to things happening in the public space.

💡That young people need to be more explicitly supported to understand how relationships actually work. And not just intimate ones. Relationships in general. With family. With friends. What are the building blocks that make ongoing interactions between humans feel healthy rather than harmful?

💡That young people need to be supported to develop the self-awareness to understand why they are making certain choices to be able to be in a position to consider making other, healthier, choices.

💡That professionals who engage with young people need greater confidence to be able to tackle these tricky topics, unpicking attitudes and behaviours with young people in ways that enable them to engage rather than defend and retreat.

So much of the learning content we have been developing at Changing Relations reflects these understandings and works to address them:

🎬 our peer s*xual abuse-themed animation - Weaving Stories

🎬 our toxic teen relationship-themed film - A is for Amy

🎬 our stories of harmful things happening at home - Sometimes it Hurts

Obviously in this somewhat horrendous financial climate for the VCSE sector, the elephant in the room is funding for people such as ourselves (and others) who are doing this vital work to be able to reach more schools and youth groups with the fabulous content we have developed!!!

Any spare change down the back of your sofa folks - give us a shout!!!

Photo credit
Image featuring actors

01/10/2026

Several of the Changing Relations team had a fun trip out to the very fancy new art gallery last night. Really exciting to see this new addition to the cultural landscape of our county.

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Studio 18, Ushaw Historic House, Chapel And Gardens
Durham
DH77DW

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+447815837034

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