Since 1998, the WCA has organized a local display of the Clothesline Project for Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The project began in 1990 in Hyannis, Massachusetts, to give a voice to victims and survivors of domestic violence and create a powerful public display of what is too often considered a private matter.
Each year, we invite participants in our RAP group for survivors of domestic abuse and their children to paint t-shirts portraying their experiences with violence, victimization, and healing, as an exercise in art therapy. With the painters’ permission, the WCA delivers clotheslines of these shirts to hang in businesses and organizations around Boise to raise awareness of the lasting impacts of domestic abuse in our community. Every year we are moved by the range of experiences our clients have shared on these shirts. The pain and fear, but also the hope and healing that they depict bear witness to the long, difficult road from abuse to freedom.
Last year, we sent over 200 painted t-shirts to businesses and organizations around Boise, including the downtown Library, Big City Coffee, HD Insurance, Boise Bicycle Project, D.L. Evans, and Washington Trust Bank.
The WCA will also join the BSU Women’s Center on campus again this year for a two-day Clothesline Project event with a 30-shirt clothesline display, WCA outreach table at the SUB patio, and an opportunity for survivors to make shirts in the Women’s Center lounge.
Would you like to participate in the clothesline project? E-mail outreach@wcaboise.org.
