The Neon Artist Teams up with Zebra One Gallery and Reclaim These Streets
Eve De Haan will shine a light on London’s streets and women’s safety issues, tomorrow (April 15), with an illuminated billboard campaign curated by Zebra One Gallery, promoting Reclaim These Streets’
‘Text Me When You Get Home’ campaign’
with all profits donated to the charity Rosa who aim to make the UK a safer, fairer place for women.
Last month, the case of 33-year-old Sarah Everard, who went missing while walking home to Brixton from a friend’s house in Clapham has started an intense and very welcome if not long-overdue debate about women’s safety on the streets and roads and homes of our cities and towns. (A serving male police officer has now been charged with the murder of poor Sarah.)
Illuminated Billboards
The billboards for the campaign were generously subsidised by Brotherhood Media, a UK outdoor advertising company and are expected to remain in place for two weeks.
we have 4 sites Shoreditch, Fulham, Peckham and Dalston that will display Eve’s Message – ‘Text Me When You Get Home,’ layered over a familiar street scene, dark and foreboding.
Getting The Message Out There
Ultimately the message hits home and gives the desired impact for which it was designed, to raise awareness, to make you think, to make the phrase which often replaces ‘goodbye’ for women and used to be “call me when you get home, let me know your safe”, thank heavens for Technology, we don’t have to wait till we are home, we can call on the go and we can text, sadly this still isn’t enough sometimes
We do need more awareness, we do need to have debates, Look at the legislation, change perceptions and we should be allowed to voice our fears without being misrepresented, mostly we should feel safe as women, we want to talk about how safeguarding and safety fears have become a routine way of life for females after dark.
In a perfect world we would not have to say ” Text Me When you Get Home” but its not a perfect world, not yet
Four original prints, including the piece displayed on billboards, will be on sale through Zebra One Gallery with ALL profits raised going to Rosa, a grant-making charity that funds grassroots women’s organisations to help make the UK a fairer, safer place for women.
The Artist
Eve says: “Many of my pieces celebrate the unique strength of women. The tragic circumstances of Sarah Everard’s murder, and similar stories of attacks and harassment towards women around the world, shows that we still have such a long way to go before we can feel safe, I wanted to share these pieces in a public setting to show support for women and to remind people, that a message like ‘Text me when you get home,’ has become a part of our everyday lives, and that shouldn’t be the case.”
Reclaim These Streets
Reclaim These Streets was formed in the aftermath of Sarah Everard’s tragic murder, with the simple idea of holding a vigil. But after the event was canceled, more than £500,000 was donated to the cause by supporters, leading to a partnership with charity Rosa.
Having already testified to the Home Affairs Committee, Reclaim These Streets (@reclaimthesestreets) are now working with cross-party MPs on amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to outlaw street harassment and kerb crawling.
Shine a Light
Jamie Klinger, one of the founders of Reclaim These Streets, says: “We are thrilled to be working with Eve and Zebra One Gallery. We need to shine a light on all of the places where women are unsafe in public spaces and Eve’s way of illustrating the plight of all women will spark conversation and interest, which ultimately translates into change.”
Zebra One Gallery owner and curator
Gabrielle du Plooy adds:
“As a woman, this is an issue close to my own heart. “I’ve lived in London my whole life and – like most women – have had personal experiences which have made me feel unsafe. So I’m delighted that the Gallery and Eve are able to work with the charity and Jamie to support, raise funds and raise awareness for this the most important of subjects.
We should feel safe wherever we are as women and the need to have to say “Text me when you get home” is something that we all wished we didn’t have to say but we do say it as someone leaves and it makes us and them feel better when we say it, the issue is that it is not the only thing we as women do, we are hyper-vigilant on our way home if traveling alone, if, in an uber, a tube, a train, a night bus, Just walking…
#TxtMeWhenYouGetHome
Ran for 2 weeks from the 15th of April until the 29th of June 2022