Who Helped Eve?
A women’s shelter reimagined through the giant advent calendar house — exploring support, solidarity, jealousy, witness, community response and the difference between standing by and stepping in.
The installation
At the centre of the experience is the hand-built Our House structure, already used in the wider project as a 25-door immersive installation, now reimagined as a shelter where women have arrived after fleeing different circumstances.
Each door opens onto traces of a different story: emergency bags, unfinished messages, children’s drawings, forms, voicemails, clothing, medication, memories, support notes and small signs of what has been survived. The shelter becomes a space of refuge, but also a record of what women carry into safety.
Rather than asking only what was done to Eve, the installation asks who noticed, who believed, who made room, who became jealous, who spread gossip, who offered shelter, and who helped her move from crisis toward healing.
Participants move through the house individually or in small groups, discovering different women’s stories and reflecting on the forms help can take. Some help is immediate and practical, some is emotional and relational, and some arrives through creative practice, advocacy, language, and communities that refuse silence.
What the experience explores
An invitation to think more carefully about support, spectatorship, social punishment and the labour of helping someone survive.
Who Helped Eve? explores the difference between care and performance. It asks what communities do when harm becomes visible, whether they respond with belief, practical support and solidarity, or with jealousy, suspicion, gossip, competition and moral judgment.
It also makes visible the hidden work of helping: listening, transport, advocacy, childcare, emergency shelter, food, language, accompaniment, signposting and staying present after the first disclosure.
- Belief, listening and practical support.
- Jealousy, gossip and social punishment.
- Women supporting women, and women policing women.
- Community responsibility and collective care.
- Services, signposting and survivor-informed action.
How the experience unfolds
Like the wider Our House format, the installation combines self-guided discovery with reflective facilitation and discussion.
Arrival
Participants enter the shelter and encounter the threshold moment: what it means to flee, arrive, wait, and not yet know who is safe.
The rooms
Doors reveal different women, different crises and different responses from family, friends, neighbours, systems and communities.
The helpers
The focus turns to the people and services who make survival possible, and the tensions between genuine care and harmful forms of attention.
The debrief
A facilitated conversation asks what help really means, what communities owe women and girls, and how support can become more consistent, creative and survivor-centred.
How Nine Red’s services help
NINE RED’s practice can be woven through the shelter model, showing how different forms of creative and therapeutic support meet different needs. The organisation describes Art Medicine as creative practice that promotes healing, wellness, coping and personal change.
When language is hard to find
Poetry and storytelling workshops help women name experiences, reclaim voice and shape meaning on their own terms rather than through the language of blame or bureaucracy.
When identity has been shattered
Narrative work supports women to reinterpret experience, reconnect past and present, and move from stories defined by harm toward stories shaped by agency and survival.
When feelings need another route
Creative activities provide safer, less exposing ways to process trauma, grief, fear and anger, especially when direct disclosure feels too difficult.
When the nervous system needs calm
Light, colour and sound-based approaches can support regulation, mood and emotional steadiness, helping the shelter feel not only safe but restorative.
When the body carries the story
Movement-based practice acknowledges that trauma is physical as well as emotional, creating room for release, grounding, dignity and communal connection.
When support must be practical too
The wider Butterflies in Shades of Grey programme includes counselling, art therapy, advocacy, mentoring, women’s listening circles and other routes that support both direct and indirect victims of domestic and sexual violence.
What participants could take away
A chance to reflect on care more honestly: what helps, what harms, and what real solidarity asks of individuals, communities and services.
Recognise meaningful support
Understand that help is not abstract: it is often practical, relational, sustained and shaped by what survivors actually need.
Notice harmful responses
Identify how jealousy, gossip, moral judgment and passive witnessing can deepen harm even when people claim to care.
Value collective care
See support as something that belongs to communities as well as professionals, services and institutions.
Understand creative healing
Recognise how creative practice, narrative work and arts-based wellbeing approaches can support recovery and voice.
Connect with real services
Leave with clearer routes into support, including counselling, advocacy, women’s listening spaces and local or national organisations.
Book Who Helped Eve?
An immersive installation and facilitated workshop for adult audiences, staff teams, partners, community groups and organisations exploring support, solidarity, safeguarding and survivor-centred practice.
Watch and read more
Explore a clip connected to Behind Closed Doors and a related article highlighting change-making work during 16 Days of Action.
Our House — Behind Closed Doors
Watch a BBC Look East clip connected to the 2019 tour and the wider public conversation around domestic abuse, survivor stories and community awareness.
Bedfordshire projects driving change during 16 Days of Action
Projects across Bedfordshire were praised during 16 Days of Action for the part they are playing in raising awareness, supporting survivors and helping drive change.
Read the full article.
On NINE RED’s project
“This project is a powerful example of creativity driving social change. It gives survivors a voice, challenges stigma and helps communities understand the realities of domestic abuse.”
Deputy PCC Umme Ali
Online resources
Support information and links connected to domestic abuse awareness and survivor support.
Bedfordshire based services
Butterflies in Shades of Grey
The programme offers a multi-faceted approach to healing and empowerment, including counselling, art therapy, advocacy, mentoring, youth support, women’s listening circles and wider creative wellbeing access.
Visit serviceBedfordshire Police
Bedfordshire Police and partners are working to tackle violence or abuse against women and girls, including rape, stalking and domestic abuse.
Visit serviceBDAP
Bedfordshire Domestic Abuse Partnership offers local information, support pathways and connections for people affected by domestic abuse.
Visit serviceNational services
24 Hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline for Women
Helping women escape domestic abuse.
ManKind Initiative
Helping men escape domestic abuse.
Visit serviceGalop
Support for LGBT+ people who have experienced abuse and violence.
Visit service