The Art of Surviving started in a small seed in 2005 with a presentation by Roberta Culbertson, one of the participating scholars on the project, when she gave a talk on the spirituality of survivor experience at the yearly retreat held by the VSDVAA for organizations working in the field of domestic and sexual violence in the state of Virginia. One of the VSDVAA staff members who attended her presentation and who later became a member of the Advisory Board and helped with many aspects of the project, was so moved by it that she went to Kate McCord and told her about it. They agreed that the spirituality of survivors of sexual and domestic violence was an important and often neglected topic. Out of their conversation arose the idea to do The Art of Surviving with art as a portal towards further conversation and education about sexual violence.

From there, The Art of Surviving evolved into a rich body of work with the participation of an Advisory Board who meets quarterly, the Women’s Center of the University of Virginia and Claire Kaplan, the Multicultural Issues Committee of the UVA Library, private donor, Alice Twining, and the many artist/poet survivors who submitted their work. Rachel Mann, owner of MettaKnowledge for Peace, LLC and a former faculty member at the University of Virginia teaching in the field of peace and violence studies, joined in as the in-residence humanities scholar. There are many others who names are not mentioned here.

The commitment of all these stakeholders to The Art of Surviving to its basic premise to give a voice to survivors as scholars of their own experience through the medium of artistic and poetic expression and to explore the connections through the lens of the humanities has been and continues to be phenomenal. We are all proud of The Art of Surviving. We look forward to furthering our mutual exploration of the spirituality of survivors of violence and to open up new pathways towards understanding the experience and impact of sexual violence worldwide.