With Autumn half term quickly approaching, The Rap Project team plans to spend time expanding its talks on sexual assault and consent to younger students. A groundbreaking Panorama documentary aired this week, reporting on the high instances of peer on peer sexual abuse in schools. As a result, Deana was invited onto BBC’s Woman’s Hour to discuss teaching consent to students. Presenter Jane Garvey and fellow guest Rachel Fitzsimmons, an SRE educator, held a lively, informative discussion on the importance of clearly explaining the law and its practice to young people. Whether we are presenting our various Raps in London, Liverpool, Manchester or beyond, students clearly struggle with understanding of what the concept of ‘consent’ actually means.
You can listen to the podcast here.
Allison spoke at the HMC Autumn Conference in Belfast. The heads of schools gathered to share ideas, listen to various workshops and support each other. It was an enlightening experience, all the more so from listening to speaker/author Nicola Morgan who expounded on Brain Bandwidth. Fantastic!
We are fortunate to have passionate students fulfil work experience with us from all over the UK.. This summer, Ellen Forshaw & Emily Smith from
St. George’s School in Edinburgh analysed our survey on how teens define ‘get with’s’ & relationships as well as how the reality show ‘Love Island’ made such an impact with teenagers this Summer.
Former intern, David Biddulph, traveled to Kenya on a Gap Year.
We are also thrilled to announce the launch of our Rap Blog, featuring two separate strands, one for teenagers and one for parents. The author of this blog, Phoebe McIndoe is a new recruit to Rap, and bring The Rap Project wants to share some news some valuable and reinvigorating down time this summer. In between each of our holidays, we are working with a small team of interns from around the country. At present, two teenagers from
St George’s School in Edinburgh are analysing the results of our survey entitled: Teenagers’ Take on Dating. In short, there is a tremendous variety of opinions, some taking a far more causal approach to intimacy than others. We will be adding their observations to our Rap Presentations this coming school year.
Pho
ebe McIndoe, Rap’s Social Media Producer & Blogger
And we are proud to introduce our newest recruit, Phoebe McIndoe. Phoebe is a writer and artist, who feels passionately about changing behaviours in schools and instilling young people with the confidence and understanding they need to build positive relationships and increased awareness about personal safety amongst each other. A graduate from Warwick University, she has lived in Berlin and taught English in Uganda and China. If you have noticed our improved social media presence and our new Rap Blog, Phoebe is responsible.
The Rap Project looks forward to a year of expanding our messages of consent, how social media and online pornography influence attitudes, expectations, behaviours and body image. Our audience didn’t create social media. Parents, teachers, The Rap Project and other organisations like ours can enlighten, discuss and try to ease their pressures.