Ready for the red carpet, Toronto’s film fest is coming soon.
Social change from a single school project
In January of this year, Tessa Hill and Lia Valente started making headlines with We Give Consent, their Grade 8 independent study project that turned into a de facto social movement. They started out with the goal of examining rape culture. They achieved, and continue to achieve, much more.
The product of their research project became a 40-minute documentary, which the two have titled “Allegedly” and made available for free online, on YouTube. It’s a video compilation of the research and interviews they conducted for the We Give Consent project whose title borrows a term commonly applied by the media to cases of sexual assault and rape which, the two soon-to-be high schoolers say, can “undermine” the experiences of assault and rape survivors.
“There are a lot of things we could’ve called it,” Valente says over the phone. “We were going to call it Use The Right Words, because we wanted to touch on the way people talk about rape culture. News media can definitely add to the culture of not believing rape survivors and women. Sometimes (the word allegedly) isn’t necessary. It can kind of re-victimize the survivor.”
“When we started out we didn’t really plan on it being something this big,” Hill says, referring specifically to the documentary’s length — their school required a piece of work around 15-20 minutes long.
“You can see that we’re pretty good students,” Valente chimes in, laughing. “When we paired up, we knew we wanted to do something around women’s rights. We brainstormed a lot of issues. The whole idea of the project was we could learn more about it. Once we started getting into the project and doing interviews, that’s when the topic of consent culture came out.”
In the documentary, Valente and Hill conduct interviews with numerous activists and case workers, including Toronto councillor Farrah Kahn, Ontario education minister Liz Sandals and prominent Toronto feminist Steph Guthrie, the latter of whom is currently in court as one side of a harassment trial currently underway in Toronto that sees Greg Elliot accused of threatening and stalking her online.
That case — in addition to recent headlines involving Jian Ghomeshi and Bill Cosby, as well as cases like that of Re- htaeh Parsons and Steubenville, all of which factor into the doc — mean Valente and Hill’s film, like their petition, is as pertinent as ever. But here, the two don’t consider themselves fortunate. The discussions surrounding their project and other initiatives like it are positive, they agree, but the events that make those conversations relevant and timely are tragic.
“We are lucky to have done this work in a period of time when there was an ongoing conversation happening around sexual assault,” Valente says. “It helped.”
Over the phone, Hill and Valente sound nearly identical, so they make sure — without fail — to identify themselves by first name before they answer any questions. It’s a move that’s emblematic of a remarkable amount of media savvy for two 14-yearolds fresh out of grade school, but it’s unsurprising, given the amount of attention they’ve garnered with We Give Consent and now with Allegedly.
What started as a school assignment exploring a social justice issue of the pair’s choice — they chose to examine rape culture — became a petition to increase education about consent in Ontario schools. That petition, in turn, ensured that consent part of Ontario’s new sex-ed curriculum, effected earlier this spring.
The curriculum could be more progressive
“It was kind of crazy to hear the backlash” Hill says, commenting on criticisms lobbied towards the new curriculum from concerned parents. “But I think (in the news) it looks like there’s a huge portion of Ontario that opposes it, when really, it’s small. The curriculum isn’t even as progressive as it could be. It’s just bringing us up to date.”
Hill and Valente, who are currently enjoying their summer vacation between interviews to discuss their documentary, will be attending the same high school in the fall. They don’t have any immediate plans to continue their advocacy for a culture of consent but, as Valente points out, “You don’t need to have a campaign to be an advocate. But we’re trying to calm it down because we’re going into high school.”
Before hanging up, the two reveal that they’re planning to pursue arts programs, specifically in film. Allegedly, in other words, is just the beginning.