Respect. Now. Always is a national initiative to address and prevent sexual assault and sexual harassment on university campuses. UTS’s commitment to working with UTS students across this program led to a transdisciplinary team being engaged to gain insights into the student experience, the UTS system and the underlying behaviours driving sexual assault and sexual harassment on campus. The program of work was comprised of a Student Voice initiative, followed by a community engagement program and a strategic framework to guide future activity in our community.
Historically, strategies for eliminating sexual violence have focused on deterrence through punishing offenders, and broadcasting the consequences of offending. These approaches breed fear, can alienate and confuse people, and paradoxically do little to deter individual instances of offending, since sexual violence is the tip of an iceberg of normalised inappropriate behaviours and enabling attitudes.
Recognising the ingrained and misunderstood nature of this problem, the project team designed a response based on ground-up cultural change. The goals were to listen deeply to students and amplify their voices, and uncover broader university attitudes and engage the entire community in an unprecedented, frank and open conversation about sexual violence.
The project employed participatory co-design at large-scale activations and workshops, where students and staff at all levels worked together to identify the problems and solve them. The results included increased community literacy in sexual violence; community-owned interventions; a framework for community-led prevention; a precedent for engaging with students; and highest-level executive endorsement.
The high levels of participation in campaign activations (over 8000 people over three years), and the appetite for community ownership of a campaign focussed on such a difficult topic highlight the positive impact that design can have on social, cultural and organisational change.
While the project fulfilled the immediate brief by producing important community insights about sexual violence that have shifted UTS practices (see Social Impact), its legacy is deeper. UTS leaders are now recognising the potential of design in other areas, e.g. new projects have since commenced to co-design UTS corporate services culture and boost social research collaborations. Additionally the project won the 2020 Good Design Award Best in Class for Social Impact. Read more: Good Design Awards.
