VICTORIOUS VOICES x VIV GORDON

Gloucester, 2025

In March 2025 (11th-16th), the fifth Victorious Voices exhibition travelled to Gloucester as part of Viv Gordon Company’s six-day UpFront Survivors programme. Presented at The Chambers in Kings Square, it brought black-and-white portraits and first-person testimonies into a temporary cultural space created for survivors and allies to gather, make art and share ideas.

This setting gave the photographs a different kind of company. The wider programme brought together creative workshops, performances and opportunities for conversation, led by people working within the survivor community. Visitors could encounter Victorious Voices alongside other forms of expression, seeing how differently survivors choose to tell their stories and how much can happen when they have space to do so.

Each portrait and testimony remained rooted in the participant’s own choices about what to show and share. The exhibition invited people to look beyond familiar assumptions about childhood sexual abuse, recognising survivors as artists, organisers, neighbours and individuals with lives that extend far beyond what happened to them.

The collaboration reflected a shared commitment between Victorious Voices and Viv Gordon Company: survivors should have the opportunity to shape cultural conversations about their experiences. In Gloucester, that commitment was visible across the space—in images and words, and in the community gathered around them.

For Victorious Voices, the exhibition was a chance to be part of a wider survivor-led programme. The portraits stood alongside people creating, speaking and connecting on their own terms.