BRING THESE STORIES HOME
70 Irish women a week travel abroad to access safe abortion services. NOT AT HOME is an archive of their stories.
This project was created with the intention of breaking the silence that has shrouded these experiences for generations. BRING THESE STORIES HOME, is a national campaign to bring the stories that NOT AT HOME has been gathering since April 2016 — and continues to gather — to every city, town and village in Ireland. As part of this campaign, we need venues all around the country to host NOT AT HOME and to provide the space in which these women’s stories can be seen, heard and reflected upon.
As with NOT AT HOME’s first showing at this year’s Dublin Fringe Festival, the piece will be accessible to those on all sides, those who are still undecided and those who currently feel unequipped to make an informed choice. This is not an attempt to preach to the converted, nor to shame anyone into taking a liberal position. In acknowledgement that the issue is complicated and complex, it is simply hoped that viewing this work will give every member of the Irish public, especially those in marginalised or remote communities, the opportunity to view women’s real, lived experiences in a quiet, reflective environment.
NOT AT HOME is the truth of a lived experience shared by thousands of Irish women and girls over decades. We believe that truth should be heard in every corner of Ireland. Before any vote is cast or any mind is made up, we believe this conversation has to happen. We believe she has a right to speak and we believe everyone has a right to listen.
To make this happen, we need you.
We need support, we need rooms, venues and public spaces all around Ireland, but most urgently, we need money. Staff, artists, performers, screens, projectors, pens and a paper and sweat and tears. It all costs money. So we ask a lot of favours, we work longer for less because this is so important to us, but we won’t ever cut corners while we have been trusted to tell these stories, so we need money.
Give what you can, give us a tenner, or a fiver, or five grand if you have it, but if you think everyone needs to hear what Irish women have gone through, are going through and will go through until something changes, give something.