What happens when survivors of church-related abuse use the Stations of the Cross as a means to speak both to their fellow survivors and to those who let them down in the communities where they were harmed?
In Jagged Edges three survivors have approached the Gospel Passion narratives, each through a different medium — linocut prints, music, poetry — to co-create their own Stations of the Cross. These new Stations draw meaningful connections between the shared narrative of Jesus’s suffering and the lived experience of individuals harmed in Christian churches. They invite us to look at Jesus’s trauma and to see his story in a particular light: as a story of abuse and as a story of God’s love for and solidarity with those who have been abused. They are also an invitation from survivors to the rest of the Church and beyond to engage in the work of repair, reconciliation and recovery.
Exhibition
Jagged Edges will be on display in Newcastle Cathedral 1st October – 26th November. Click here to find out more.
Jagged Edges was on display at Shieldfield Arts Works in April 2025. To read about the SAW exhibition click here.
Resources
The booklet below contains the Jagged Edges linocut prints and poetry, along with some additional materials for use in personal reflection and group discussion. You will also find prompts to play audio recordings of Peter’s music and David’s poetry, which are a part of the exhibition.
If you would like to have copies of the booklet printed professionally, please contact Jon Graham from Fundamental Design & Marketing at jon@fundamentaldesign.co.uk and he will be happy to help.
You can download the audio files below:
Download Jagged Edges music tracks.
Download Jagged Edges poetry tracks.
These resources are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Jagged Edges Webinar
In June 2024, David, Peter and Sarah delivered a webinar in the Moral Injury Webinar Series hosted by the International Centre for Moral Injury at Durham University. You can watch a video of their presentation below.