Handcuffed to Fear: Chains of Domestic Violence

In our latest bid to encourage social change, we have designed a hard-hitting sculpture to open the conversation about the ever-growing domestic abuse crime that is prevalent throughout the UK.

The sculpture will show a master puppeteer, pulling the silent strings of their puppet. Domestic abuse is often a hidden crime that takes place behind closed doors, which can result in it unfortunately going under the radar for too long. 

It will be created from recycled handcuffs, all donated to us from police constabularies around the nation. The handcuffs represent the feeling of being trapped, with no escape that many DA survivors have faced.

Both the puppet figure and the puppeteer will be genderless, as abuse can, and does, happen to both men and women. Research shows that 1 in 5 adults experience domestic abuse during their lifetime, which equates to 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6-7 men.

Many people primarily consider domestic abuse to be physical, but it actually consists of sexual abuse, violent or threatening behaviour, controlling or coercive behaviour, economic abuse and psychological or emotional abuse.

This week we met with Detective Sergeant Amy Kitosi-Isanga, from West Mercia Police, who reached out to us with the kind offer of utilising old handcuffs into a ‘Fight Against Domestic Abuse’ sculpture. 

Police constabularies across the UK have recently upgraded all of their standard issue handcuffs, and West Mercia Police immediately thought of us to turn the scrap metal into a sculpture for social benefit. 

We want to keep the public in the loop about the developments of our hard-hitting sculpture, and call on members of our society, if they feel comfortable doing so, to share their DA survivor stories with us.

We are currently writing to the home office, as well as prison services, for maximum engagement in bringing awareness to this prevalent crime. We’re hoping to receive a generous amount of donations from police constabularies around the nation, in order to refine our conceptual project and allow us to create the larger than life sculpture that we’ve envisioned.