By Mabel Wellman.
Telling My Story: From Darkness To Light was an exhibition of the artwork that has been created by clients of the local charity, Yellow Door. It was on display at God’s House Tower for a short run, from August 28th to 31st.
For 40 years now, Yellow Door (which was recently one of 4 charities supported by Southampton Ukulele Jam at the same venue) have helped initially women, but now expanded to offer a range of services to support people of all ages, backgrounds and genders who have been affected by domestic and sexual abuse, as well as other forms of interpersonal harm.
Services offered by Yellow Door include Art Therapy 1:1s (in which drawing or painting can help it to talk about difficult issues), therapeutic services, and also the STAR Project – which works with young people in school, university and other settings to help raise awareness of abuse and help youths get help early on. Yellow Door promote equality and inclusion with their Diversity and Inclusion Advocacy team to help people access help who may have barriers to seeking help due to faith, sexuality, community or immigration issues (in which their workers speak multiple languages) as well as a worker to help with those affected by “Harmful Practices” including FGM, “honour” based violence and other such practices.
This art exhibition is just one of many ways that Yellow Door are celebrating 40 years of incredible service to a number of communities in Southampton. Yellow Door will be holding other events and celebrations for their teams. To mark 40 years, Yellow Door also opened “Aspen” on the 3rd April, a new modern and accessible space which will be an incredible resource to further help service users.
Telling My Story: From Darkness To Light featured a large number of artwork from Yellow Door’s clients. This included paintings, drawings, written work, and much more. These pieces of work, many of which form the same clients, showed an incredible journey each of them have went through when facing horrifying abuse, and enduring the long lasting hardship which abuse can then often bring about. There is no other collection of artwork I have seen which is so inspiring for this reason.
One particular piece that has stuck with me is from the “Then And Now” group, which on their large piece has the quote “life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain”. I feel it so strongly reverberates the feelings of hope that I’m sure drives so many people to seek help and escape abuse.
You can donate to Yellow Door to help with their incredible work here: yellowdoor.org.uk/get-involved/donate
To find out more about the services Yellow Door provide, visit: yellowdoor.org.uk/services
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