Reclaim - A movement in a message.

It is 1977, over a hundred women walk the streets of Leeds, their voices raised;

“Women unite, reclaim the night”

The cry of a movement, the poetry of a protest song, a song still harrowingly sung 50 years after its inception. For context, throughout the 70s the North of England was blighted by a serial killer targeting women alone. By 1977 he had killed at least seven women and attempted to kill several more.

Police sexism was rife, they routinely ignored statements often dismissing them, even blaming the victim, as they were women out alone, and so judged to be of lesser character or “on the game”

Eventually these attitudes of blame and dismissal came to a head in 1977 as police all but ordered women to stay inside. In response the women of Leeds took to the streets, As Al Garthwaite, one of those original marching women, said;

“That was partly what fuelled our anger and rage, that in effect there was a curfew on women but not on men”

This brings us to my point, the artistry and importance of that poetic cry, and all the creation that surrounded it on placard poles and painted sheets pulled taught. A single phrase, a simple rhyme, said more than many a multi-verse poem.

A rallying cry reiterated in ink and any accessible material. It changed the national conversation at the time, those marches at night brought a great deal of light to the issue at hand.

You see there is such power when you create something, in fact this is the ethos of The Lenthall road workshop who printed the below artwork by Sue Stiles;

“once you start seeing yourself as a person who can do things then you're in a position to take control of your life”

That is why the protest song, the placard, matter so much as an art form, and why they should be celebrated. It is truly the art of the masses and the truest of arts. It is unconcerned with a sale, an aesthetic, a trend. It is emotion, it is truth, it unifies, moves masses and makes reality shift.

Creation enables autonomy, autonomy enables growth.