E-PLAY covered the song by EKV | Balkanrock.com

As part of the campaign to raise awareness about the safety of women and girls in public space in Serbia, the organization Mixer i bend E-Playwith the support of the United Nations Agency for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment – UN Women Serbia, announce the premiere release of the video “Aut” on Mikser’s YouTube channel, today, Wednesday, May 17, at 2 p.m.

In a year in which, as a society, we are facing an explosion of violence, especially against women and girls, as evidenced by the increase in the number of femicides compared to previous years, the safety of women, girls and other vulnerable groups in public space has become an absolute priority for humane, sustainable and safer cities that we dream about. Following this idea, UN Women Serbia supported the Women’s Architectural Association, as well as five expert civil society organizations, including the Mikser collective, to map challenges on the ground in 5 cities of Serbia: Kragujevac, Kruševac, Novi Pazar, Niš and Sombor over the past year. in the local environments that our women citizens face and convey the methodology and tools to the decision makers in those environments for improving the safety and sense of security of women citizens and all citizens in public city spaces. The result of the project is a proposal for a series of urban, infrastructural and systemic security measures that should be adopted by city administrations, so that women and girls no longer feel like a discriminated part of the population for whom returning home at night, and not only at night, often represents a great security risk.

The crown of this campaign is the premiere of the video, which was created in cooperation with the Belgrade band E-play, a cover of the song “AUT” by the iconic Belgrade rock group EKV, whose chorus “She walks alone through the city” in the best way sublimates the need of women and girls in our country to be free from fear during their movements through our cities.

Research conducted by the Mikser organization in Kragujevac, one of the pilot cities, shows that almost all women and girls modify their behavior far more and more often than men out of fear for their safety – they develop different personal tactics, such as moving at night exclusively in a group, accompanied by men , changing the route of movement, avoiding certain parts of the city, modifying clothing, simulating conversations on a mobile phone, often even completely giving up movement – which speaks of the unequal use of the city as a resource that should be equally accessible to all citizens.

The goal of the campaign is to raise the awareness of society and initiate the fight against the normalization of gender-based violence in the public space and media, so that all actors of society – from decision-makers and law enforcement agencies, through urban planners and architects, educators and the media, to the citizens themselves – take responsibility and took measures aimed at increasing the sense of security of women, girls and all citizens, developing a society of solidarity and empathy, and above all, safe movement and equal use of the city and all city resources for all our citizens.

We invite all media, relevant associations, artistic collectives and all progressive entities in the country to broadcast this video on their communication channels and raise this topic, which will contribute to raising awareness about the threatened safety of women and girls in Serbia.

Mikser organizations will publicly present the research results, as well as recommendations for improving the safety of public spaces in one of the pilot cities, Kragujevac, at the upcoming Arsenal Fest, which is also one of our strategic local project partners.