Talk

Scherezade Siobhan

twitter site

Scherezade Siobhan is an Indo-Rroma social scientist, community catalyst and a hack scribbler of 2 poetry collections - Bone Tongue (Thought Catalog Books, 2015), Father, Husband (Salopress, 2016) & 1 poetry pamphlet - to dhikr, i (Pyramid Editions, Forthcoming). She is the creator and curator of "The Mira Project" - a global, cross-cultural virtual space that uses digital storytelling, collaborative conversations and expressive arts to dismantle gender based violence generally & street harassment, specifically. She also runs "The Talking Compass" - a digital & irl mental health services provider that focuses on providing therapeutic solutions, counselling and resource-sharing focussing on destigmatizing mental health and illness for womxn/woman-identified and gender non conforming folx in India and across the world. On the personal front, she is a tea-sipper, verandah-sitter, overall loose woman who can be found squeeing about militant bunnies, neuroscience and digital humanities at twitter.com/zaharaesque or www.zaharaesque.com

The Mira Project : Cyberspace, Catharsis & Community Building
gender based violence violence against women street harassment sexual violence

Can we successfully create a virtual space that builds a micro-community & enables catharsis for womxn and gender non-conforming folx who experience or have experienced street harassment & gender based violence, just by the simple act of giving them the power to own their narrative through collaborative, digital storytelling?
This question was the beginning of The Mira Project. I am an India based clinical psychologist & community catalyst who realised how a social media platform like Tumblr could be harnessed to create a unique, interactive space for womxn who wanted to speak up and against gender based violence especially street harassment and build an active, engaged community. Coming from a country like mine which is a hotbed for severe incidents of street harassment, the conception involved asking ourselves - Why has street harassment been normalized in most cultures across the world?
So far, we have collected & curated narratives from Rwanda, Egypt, Scotland, Hong Kong, Mauritius Singapore, India, Australia, USA and many other countries. Our youngest Mira is 16 & our oldest is 65 (so far).
We are a community, we are unstilled & multitudes. We are akin mandalas : interconnectedness, songs & stories threaded infinitely. To share is the ability to secure our own stories and not allow them to be scattered at the mercy of our traumas.
Our goal is #1MillionMiras
Here, each voice matters. Here, we take space.
Without apologies.