In April, 2007, a group of survivors, poets, artists, scholars, and activists gathered at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities in Charlottesville, Virginia to consider a number of questions:

• What is the “art of surviving”?
• How do the humanities give us new understandings of the problem of sexual violence in our society and for the individual?
• How can the humanities help us understand the spiritual dimensions of sexual violence and contribute to individual and collective healing through expression and community action and reflection?
• How do people use self-expression to survive and heal?
• What are the historical, cultural and spiritual patterns among human beings as they seek to heal from sexual violence?
• In what ways can the humanities help us end sexual violence in the world as a whole?

The answers were rich and evocative, ranging from “the humanities contextualizes human experience” to art is “taking the whole of the self and presenting it in a manner understandable to others.” Read the report of Phase 1 of The Art of Surviving and find out more: Art of Surviving Phase 1 Report.