Reclaiming dignity through creative encounters among Brazilian women survivors of violence in London

Responding to recent calls for geography, especially urban and public geography, to engage more fully with the concept of dignity, this paper shows how feminist participatory arts-based approaches can facilitate the reclaiming of dignity among migrant women survivors of violence, an issue which has received surprisingly limited attention to date. We argue for feminist cultural geography to engage more fully with conceptualisations of dignity and especially how working through participatory arts is key to building it among migrant women. Drawing on ongoing research with a community arts organisation, Migrants in Action (MinA), run by and working with Brazilian migrant women in London, the paper proposes the notion of ‘creative dignity encounters’. These entail generating safe and compassionate spaces for women to engage in artistic engagements that allow them to reclaim their dignity conceived relationally as respect and recognition, self-respect and autonomy. We identify three types of ‘creative dignity encounters’ revolving around these three dimensions; the first, facilitates migrant women’s reinterpretation of and additional contributions to prior social science research as an act of respect and recognition; the second, engenders self-respect through healing and belonging and the third, builds autonomy through acknowledging and challenging wider structural oppressions that underpin gendered violence. Such encounters create different outcomes depending on the artistic medium and how they are sustained over time. Furthermore, they are not a panacea for bringing about social transformation and recovery, yet they can allow migrant women to begin their journeys towards reclaiming dignity in affective, relational and embodied ways.