Amplifying Voices Award
Holding Our Own: non-policing solutions to ‘serious violence’
Image from panel at Holding Our Own Launch event (from L-R: representatives from Liberty, Kids of Colour, Release, INQUEST, Art Against Knives, and No More Exclusions) (Photographer: Lali Coombes)
Working with young people, groups organising across human rights, youth services, racial justice, and mental health, and the communities they represent affected by discriminatory policing, the Holding Our Own campaign challenged the dominant narrative around ‘serious violence’ and demonstrated that alternatives are possible.
The Campaign
The Holding Our Own campaign say ‘serious violence’ sits at the heart of British policing, fuelling the expansion of police powers, and putting communities in the way of harm: from the death of Chris Kaba to the strip search of Child Q. While a series of scandals have brought policing into disrepute, far from seeing powers stripped back from police, more are granted, all too often in the name of safety, security, and protection.
Over the course of two years, via facilitated workshops, the Holding Our Own coalition developed a campaign to push back against the dominant response to ‘serious violence’ and the media and public narratives that demonise communities. They developed a guide which detailed what to dismantle and what practices to build, with young people’s voices centred throughout.
Together they built cross-sectoral opposition to an issue that’s regularly used as a political football, using community-led alternatives to respond to the root causes of violence and injustice.
Campaign poster from Holding Our Own ‘Demands for a Better Tomorrow’. Photographer: Lyra Vega; graphic designer: Rachel Carr)
It is an honour to receive this recognition from SMK. The Holding Our Own campaign builds upon decades of resistance to harmful policing led by grassroots groups and marginalised communities. We dedicate this award to that legacy and to the ongoing fight against State violence and injustice.”
Campaign poster from Holding Our Own ‘Demands for a Better Tomorrow’. Photographer: Lyra Vega; graphic designer: Rachel Carr)
It is an honour to receive this recognition from SMK. The Holding Our Own campaign builds upon decades of resistance to harmful policing led by grassroots groups and marginalised communities. We dedicate this award to that legacy and to the ongoing fight against State violence and injustice.”
The Change
Unique to the campaign was how the work was done and the values central to it: community (young people led workshops, sat on panels, DJ’d and emceed the launch event), joy (working with a photographer to ensure Black friendship was authentically represented in campaign materials), and healing (providing counselling for HOO campaigners). These practices continue to be shared and the campaign has successfully moved the wider sector to rally behind their demands and inspired them to undertake similar work.
Holding Our Own is successfully building opposition to the narratives around ‘serious violence’ constructed by many politicians and media outlets. Polling and extensive message testing with the public and other young people has been widely covered in the media, reframing this issue in a compelling way to the public and policymakers.
The campaign brought their analysis to various stakeholders: 250 MPs received briefings, they sat down with the Labour frontbench to influence their forthcoming manifesto, gave evidence at the London Assembly inquiry into Preventing Violence and Protecting Young People, submitted evidence to the United Nations Independent Expert on Racial Justice, spoke at the parliamentary launches of other campaigns, and contributed to a forthcoming compendium on Global Alternatives to Policing.
The Future
The Holding Our Own campaign will, together and as individual organisations, continue to work with the media, civil society organisations, groups with lived experience, supporters, and politicians to illustrate the harms of policing and to propose alternative solutions. It will continue to increase public awareness and shift public opinion.
Their vision is for these human rights issues to be met with a caring response, centring community-led solutions that keep people safe and support them to flourish. By championing solutions that have dignity and justice at their heart, they want to put an end to over-policing and break the damaging cycle of over-reliance on the criminal justice system.
Who else was involved?
The Holding Our Own campaign would not have been possible without those organising and working at Art Against Knives, No More Exclusions, Northern Police Monitoring Project, JENGbA, Release, INQUEST, NSUN, Maslaha, Kids of Colour and Liberty. Members of the public and the young people that participated in the focus groups and research, the facilitators at NEON and PIRC, the messaging consultants and Beatfreeks and Walnut, the Counsellors (Peter Searle and Ebi Umoetuk), and artists that performed at the launch event, all brought the campaign into fruition.
