We are UpFront Survivors
Child sexual abuse survivor artists and activists, front line sexual violence services and researchers supporting the CSA survivor community to be upfront - to speak out and step into cultural leadership.

The project:

UpFront Survivors was our three-year, Home Office funded programme of creative changemaking, developed and delivered in partnership with SARSAS, The Green House and Coventry University.

The project was all about our community leading cultural change through creating visible survivor-led community spaces and experiences, and working with frontline services and researchers towards effective, holistic, sustainable support. 
CSA survivors lack cultural representation as our experiences are hidden and taboo. We live with ongoing silencing and censorship, and many of us are not able to safely self-identify or speak out about our experiences.

Most of us have never met another survivor, so do not feel part of a community. We want to connect with each other and take up space.

In its final year, UpFront Survivors has most recently delivered a six-day CSA survivor led programme from 11th to 16th March 2025 in Gloucester (Click here to see the programme), following 3 previous pop-up event spaces in 2023 and 2024.
'Lego Superheroes' workshop. Creative Leaders Training 2023.
Viv Gordon speaking at the launch of UpFrontSurvivors 2024. Photo: JMA Photography

UpFront Survivors had four interacting strands:

1) Finding the Words – creative workshops designed and delivered by CSA survivor artists for CSA survivors.
Workshops were led by Clare Shaw, Jemima Foxtrot and Viv Gordon, among others.
2) National Creative Social Change Network – a space for adult CSA survivor artists, activists and changemakers.

The network delivered the national Zebra Day CSA 2025 campaign.
3) Creative Leaders Training – training and mentoring for emerging CSA survivor creatives. Trainees were supported to take their next steps into cultural leadership.

The first, South West based cohort of emerging Creative Leaders completed their training in 2023, followed by cohorts in 2024 and 2025.

"Week by week, the tools and skills demonstrated, together with the team and the experienced, safe approach they adopted allowed me to thoroughly embrace the course. This gave me the courage, conviction and self belief to take the leap, trust my heart and follow my intuitive career plans." - Former trainee
4) Pop-up Cultural Spaces – a series of co-created and co-produced community spaces for CSA survivors and allies to gather, be creative and make change.

The first pop-up cultural space for our community coincided with the launch of the ABC of CSA project in Exeter in February 2023, followed by the launch of the UpFront Survivors project at The People’s Republic of Stokes Croft CIC in Bristol in March that year.
In March 2024 we created our third pop-up space at East Street Arts in Leeds (Click here to read Viv's reflection blog).

The final pop-up cultural space was held in March 2025 in Gloucester.
"Child sexual abuse cannot exist where there is no shame or stigma. What this community are doing to reduce that shame and stigma and what the ABC is doing to give people words around what they've experienced means you will not be able to perpetrate these crimes in places where people will not allow you to hold that shame and stigma over your victims. This is genuinely prevention work. This coming from survivors is so much more powerful than anything else you will ever see in this space."
(Claire Bloor, former CEO of SARSAS at the first pop-up cultural space in Exeter 2023)
Photos by JMA Photography and Viv Gordon Company
UpFront Survivors is funded through the Home Office Support for Victims and Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (SVSCSA) Fund 2022/25.
Developed and delivered in partnership with