VICTORIOUS VOICES x SCOTTISH MENTAL HEALTH ARTS FESTIVAL

Glasgow, 2024

The inaugural Victorious Voices exhibition opened at the University of Glasgow’s Advanced Research Centre (ARC) as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival’s In/Visible programme. It brought portraits and personal testimonies from adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse into a space encountered by people going about their everyday lives.

That setting was deliberate. The exhibition was installed in the ARC’s entrance foyer, where visitors, students and staff would pass through it. Victorious Voices sought to place survivors’ experiences within public and cultural life, opening a conversation that too often remains confined to specialist services or private spaces. More than 40 survivors, academics and members of the public attended the opening.

Shortly before the opening, concerns were raised about the content of one work. Larger content warnings and a revised layout were agreed, giving visitors clearer information and a choice about how to encounter the exhibition while keeping it visible in the foyer.

Several days later, the entire exhibition was moved to a secluded side room without consultation with the project. The university described the decision as a trauma-informed response to concerns about the content and its duty of care. For survivors and supporters, moving the work out of the main public space raised a different concern: whose comfort was being protected, and at what cost to survivor visibility?

A public petition called for the exhibition to be restored to its original position. The move drew wider attention to the work and sharpened the question posed by the festival’s In/Visible theme. What does it mean for an institution to welcome survivor stories, then move them when those stories make people uncomfortable?

Glasgow became more than the first presentation of Victorious Voices. It showed why the project’s commitment to survivor voice, choice and public presence matters. It insisted that visibility must be more than an invitation extended on comfortable terms.