Overview
This activity adapts the principle of focus group discussion by using art as a means to assess job satisfaction and identify sexual harassment and abuse. This practical activity is based on a monitoring and evaluation exercise used by Fair Wear Foundation (FWF) to assess its Workplace Education Programmes in Bangladesh and India. The technique assesses workers’ job satisfaction, and through this process experiences of verbal, physical or sexual harassment. The artwork focus groups were carried out off-site.
Suggested time
60-90 minutes
Target group
- Women workers, especially those with low levels of literacy, who cannot complete other forms of surveys.
Aims
- Develop a better understanding of sexual harassment and other forms of abuse.
- Identify problems that workers experience, but are unlikely to speak about, including sexual harassment.
Preparation
- Make sure you have the questions at hand.
- Copy them on flip charts if you have literate participants.
Setting
A room large enough to accommodate several groups.
Materials
- Drawing paper
- Coloured pens
- If available: marker pens, coloured paper, scissors, sticky tape, colour stickers, A4 white paper, filp chart size paper.
Time/Steps
Step 1: (suggested time: 45 minutes)
In groups of three, ask participants to talk about:
- What do you like most about yourself?
- What do dislike about yourself?
Next, each participant is asked to carry out some artwork to express their answers to the questions by:
- Drawing your own image on paper
- Use coloured pens to highlight what you like and what you don’t like
This is followed by a presentation where three people tell the group about their drawings.
Step 2: (suggested time: 15 minutes)
In groups of three, ask participants to talk about:
- What have you enjoyed most about your family life?
- What have you enjoyed least about your family life?
Next each participant is asked to carry out some artwork to express their answers to the questions by:
- Drawing your family life and how you spend your time aside from work
- Use colour pens to highlight what you like an what you don’t like
This is followed by a presentation where another three people tell the group about their drawings.
Step 3: (suggested time: 15 minutes)
In groups of three, ask participants to talk about:
- What have you enjoyed most at work?
- What have you enjoyed least at work?
Next each participant is asked to carry out some art work to express their answers to the questions by:
- Drawing the factory environment (including people, machines, pay, working time, etc.) on the flip chart paper
- Use coloured pens to highlight what you like and what you don’t like in your factory
Step 4: (suggested time: 45 minutes)
An open discussion is held about the factory environment (prompted by the following questions):
- How do you feel in general about your work?
- How do you feel in general about your life?
- What do you do when you experiencing those feelings?
- What will be the ideal working conditions (people, machine, pay, working time, etc)?
- If you would be able to change one thing at work or in your life, what would you do?
How to adapt it
This activity can be adapted for use with workers from factories and farms and can be used as part of formal training for worker committees or for trade union/ NGO women’s activities.
Tips
- An experienced facilitator should run this exercise.
- This activity aims to teach some practical skills in how to consult with women with low literacy levels.
- The facilitator should keep the questions in Step 4 on a separate piece of paper for reference during the discussion.
- It will be important once the activity has been completed to discuss with participants the specific skills that are needed in carrying out this activity.
Resources
For further information see: FWF (2015) report on artwork focus groups. It includes ways in which the feedback/data from the artwork focus groups can be captured and recorded. Available at: http://www.fairwear.org/ul/cms/fck-uploaded/documents/fwfpublications_reports/FWFArtFocus-Report.pdf
