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Changing Relations, Studio 18, Ushaw Historic House, Chapel and Gardens, Durham (2026)

Q: What is the address?

Studio 18, Ushaw Historic House, Chapel And Gardens

12/10/2026

Always useful to add fuel to the fire of ones motivation to do the work we do at Changing Relations.

A brilliant pair of feminist writers featured at yesterday, expertly hosted by Durham University's Emeritus Professor Jane Macnaughton, drawing out the common threads in the work of the fabulous & .

What stood out to us was:

💡 The way seemingly disparate global issues such as the climate crisis & increasing political instability & violence can also be related to violence against women & girls, which tends to increase in the aftermath of disasters & when heat rises.

💡The idea that the individualist messaging of lean-in-style feminism places pressure on individual women to work harder to be fine / make an impact & obscures the reality that we're facing huge interconnected global crises & systems that require a collective effort.

💡Government emphasis on economic growth as the means to solve social problems is problematic when the unpaid care work that is mostly performed by women is not measured within the standard calculation of a given country's economic growth.

💡The p**n that has become increasingly mainstream privileges male entitlement to s*x & to a large extent, is more about power than pleasure, eroticising women's humiliation & degradation in a twisted reinforcement of old-fashioned patriarchal norms.

💡The frequent s*xual strangulation that is resulting from its normalisation within mainstream p**n has been seen in MRI scans to be giving young women brain damage. At the same time, a significant number of young men are saying that p**n is negatively impacting their lives.

And the one we need to help us not be entirely depressed by this picture:

💡 Patriarchy is not inevitable. If things have changed for the worst, that means it is possible for them to change for the better.

It wasn't easy listening. And we don't imagine it will be easy reading.

But it absolutely underlines the importance of the work we do in promoting healthy relationships, deconstructing gender norms and exploring healthy versus harmful s*xual attitudes and behaviours.

09/10/2026

Next up, a little extract from our A is for Amy toolkit & a flavour of the impact of our test delivery with schools & youth groups earlier this year.

Our fab facilitators & delivered the programme to 202 young people across 2 secondary schools, 1 alternative education setting & 2 youth groups.

Participants included those with:

🩵 known lived experience of domestic abuse
🩵 SEMH needs
🩵 SEND need

We developed 3 variants of the programme, delivering:

🎬 the full programme over a period of weeks
🎬 a slightly shorter programme as a dropdown day
🎬 just a film showing followed by a Q&A

Whichever way we delivered it, there was a positive impact on the young people, but the most significant impact was for those who did the programme over a period of weeks:

💬 “I think on the 4th session, that's when it hit home, & it's like, oh goodness me, this is me, right – recognising themselves as the red flag.”

Evidence shows significant positive impacts on the young people:

💬 "I would be able to spot reg flags more now."

💬 "It would help people pick up tiny signs if their friends were in a relationship & it was unhealthy, they'd be able to give advice, give help..."

💬 “This has helped, particularly the young men…to really consider what it means to be a man.”

💬 “It gives them language to feeling already it wasn't right.”

💬 "I would tell the teacher if I was worried... I would support my friend & make sure she wasn’t alone."

This extract from the toolkit shows an example of a young person's depiction of "insta versus reality", a creative exercise we used to encourage them to reflect on the impression of Amy's relationship her friends might have from her positive-seeming social media posts and the way in which this contrasts with the reality of her experience of a controlling relationship.

We're so pleased to have welcomed a fab new cohort this week of Secondary school teachers, youth workers & other educational professionals who'll be using the A is for Amy programme with their young people over the next term 🤩

07/10/2026

& have been busy this week delivering Background Knowledge CPD sessions for the educators who've signed up to receive our A is for Amy & Sometimes it Hurts toolkits & trial delivery of our learning programmes next term.

So we thought we'd share a little glimpse inside the toolkits of the insights that came out of the test delivery where our lush creative practitioners ran the sessions with schools & youth groups.

First up: Sometimes it Hurts, our story series that features 6 fictionalised accounts of young people describing something that hurts in their home & its impact on their lives.

Here you can see a map created by a Y6 child who used colour & mark-making to depict Ted's world. We absolutely love the nuance & complexity of emotion & experience it shows this young person has developed through the programme.

Whilst the programme interrogates the experiences of fictional characters, imagine how empowering this would be for a young person who is experiencing something tricky, to find they now have the language to explain to a trusted adult what is happening for them.

Children said:

💬 “It’s easier for me to learn [with the story].”

💬 “Listening to the stories helps you understand... analysing the stories helps you understand more.”

Teachers said:

💬 "The children had a deep understanding of the different qualities that make a healthy or unhealthy relationship."

💬 "They felt more enabled to trust their judgement... an increased feeling of self belief in making decisions.“

💬 "Quieter children that don't normally speak up to the class were sharing their thoughts because they could relate to the content & that creativity."

💬 "Children demonstrated better self-expression & self-understanding: the first week, happy, sad, that was about it. By week 6, we had anxious, overwhelmed, furious, dysregulated & they still use those words."

💬 "It's given her confidence because she's been allowed to have some language to name her experience."

It's been a HUGE amount of work to pull these toolkits together (massive shout out to Lucy & Kate) but boy are we proud of what we have developed 🤩

05/10/2026

here -

I've been wanting to write about : the sickening news of gang r**e on campus. The even more sickening news that 50+ young men in a group chat neither challenged the offer to join in the r**e of a young woman too incapacitated to consent nor called the police to report this harmful, unlawful activity.

Then today, reports of the "horrifying" scale of child-on-child s*xual abuse in British schools:

⚖️ ~5 s*xual crimes against children aged 12 & younger were recorded by police every day in primary & secondary schools in England and Wales between 2021-25.

⚖️ 1 allegation of r**e at a school is received by police every day.

⚖️ More than 1/3 of these r**e victims were under 13.

⚖️ 2/3 were female.

[https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/oct/04/child-on-child-s*xual-abuse-schools-england-and-wales]

What does this tell us?

We MUST address harmful s*xual attitudes & behaviours as early as Primary.

Not just to prevent future cases like Cornell. We've got children far younger than University age behaving harmfully to other children.

For me, the most striking learning from cocreating our Weaving Stories of Peer Sexual Abuse animation was:

💡 The degree to which "low-level" behaviours are normalised, yet research suggests that settings where this level of activity is not addressed are the context in which more extreme incidences are more likely.

💡Our animation's emphasis on the impact of this behaviour helped young people recognise that "low-level" behaviours are not harmless.

💡The impact on the young people engaging in our animation was greater for boys.

If "boys are overwhelmingly the perpetrators" of harmful s*xual behaviour, even where other boys are the victims, it is critical that work that engages boys is funded.

We need to help them recognise what is happening & what is not acceptable, the impact it has & the ways they can respond if they see something a peer is doing that they now understand is likely to harm the person on the receiving end.

We cannot have our boys getting to Higher Education & not being ready to call out the harmful behaviour of their peers.

Image

02/10/2026

We attended a really interesting webinar last week via the Teenage Relationship Abuse Community of Practice, convened by the .

So many of the key points rang true with the work we have been doing in this area over the last few years:

💡 That harmful behaviours are starting at a younger age.

💡That we need to see much earlier interventions before unhealthy behaviours go beyond normalised to entrenched.

💡That there is an intersection of the contexts in which harmful behaviours are being displayed, crossing between the privacy of intimate partner relationships to things happening in the public space.

💡That young people need to be more explicitly supported to understand how relationships actually work. And not just intimate ones. Relationships in general. With family. With friends. What are the building blocks that make ongoing interactions between humans feel healthy rather than harmful?

💡That young people need to be supported to develop the self-awareness to understand why they are making certain choices to be able to be in a position to consider making other, healthier, choices.

💡That professionals who engage with young people need greater confidence to be able to tackle these tricky topics, unpicking attitudes and behaviours with young people in ways that enable them to engage rather than defend and retreat.

So much of the learning content we have been developing at Changing Relations reflects these understandings and works to address them:

🎬 our peer s*xual abuse-themed animation - Weaving Stories

🎬 our toxic teen relationship-themed film - A is for Amy

🎬 our stories of harmful things happening at home - Sometimes it Hurts

Obviously in this somewhat horrendous financial climate for the VCSE sector, the elephant in the room is funding for people such as ourselves (and others) who are doing this vital work to be able to reach more schools and youth groups with the fabulous content we have developed!!!

Any spare change down the back of your sofa folks - give us a shout!!!

Photo credit
Image featuring actors

01/10/2026

Several of the Changing Relations team had a fun trip out to the very fancy new art gallery last night. Really exciting to see this new addition to the cultural landscape of our county.

30/09/2026

This time last week we were at the report launch at the beautiful Middlesbrough Town Hall hearing some really sobering stories and statistics.

Imagine a vulnerable 16 year old lad who has moved here to get away from something unpleasant in his home land and has engaged in a learning and support process to help him integrate and make his steps into education and employment but finds himself being shoved and spat at on public transport.

The report, led by the very inspiring , indicates that 54% of those they spoke to had directly experienced racism, rising to 78% who felt it to be an everyday issue.

Of those with direct experience, 1/3 experienced it on public transport.

And this is where the coalition's point about being anti-racist rather than simply non-racist feels relevant. Because it means things are happening in a context where others have observed and I wonder how many of those bystanders took action in any shape or form.

Interestingly, given the claims of many right wing oriented groups that they are motivated by protecting women's safety, 70% of those who experienced direct racism were women.

The North East Anti-Racism Coalition is such a brilliant collective of people who are absolutely committed to changing this picture and who get that doing so means meeting people where they are. We are really looking forward to seeing what programmes it's possible for us to collaboratively develop.

But you can become part of the conversation too - whether as a representative of the organisation you work for or on your own account as an individual - https://northeastantiracism.org.uk/become-the-bridge/

28/09/2026

Funders make so much possible for not-for-profit organisations like Changing Relations. It is easy to assume that what they bring to a grantee is “just” money and that it is purely a transactional relationship.

“Just” money is hugely important – it is what makes much of the work that we do possible (and if anyone would like to contribute “just” money towards our work we’d love to hear from you).

But sometimes funders bring something that isn’t “just” pounds and pence.

The Paul Hamlyn Foundation are currently funding our A is for Amy-Sometimes it Hurts project which addresses child/young person experiences of domestic abuse and teen relationship abuse. Within this project we have a small amount of time from the amazing Susanne Burns supporting our overall evaluation approach, particularly looking from a qualitative perspective. But we also have some really rich quantitative data and we know that we don’t currently have the skills we need to really make the most of that.

So, Kate asked the Paul Hamlyn Foundation if they could help us develop those skills and they said yes! They are hugely supportive of organisations developing skills to support the work they do and we are super grateful for this.

Thanks to a connection made by Susanne, Kate is now working with Tamsin Cox from DHA Communications developing her skills to really allow us to make the most of the quantitative data we are collecting. It’s a learning curve…but we're already seeing the fruit of it.

So, this is a thank you to The Paul Hamlyn Foundation for making this possible, Susanne Burns for the connection and Tamsin Cox for stretching Kate's brain (and making her grin as she sees more of what our data shows).

26/09/2026

There's a whole range of different ways we work with people. We love to meet people in person and get a sense of what our partner organisation or creative / academic collaborator wants and needs.

Fancy a chat?

Get in touch!

[email protected]

23/09/2026

Can't believe a whole year has gone by since this amazing team came together to create our film A is for Amy!

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