Women At Work participate in campaign 16 Days of Activism against Violence against Women since its founding, but since 2003 every year we organize traveling performances around the issue of violence against women. In 2008 the name of the performance was I can not leave, because....
The issue we tackled in this year's campaign was difficulties women are facing due to violent partnerships and number of reasons that stop them to leave such a relationship. Some of these reasons are societal taboos, ans it is not unusual that women being in a marriage for twenty years approach services for victims of abuse and face various stigmatization. By presenting voices of battered women caught in the cycle of domestic violence we wanted to raise better understanding of women’s position in abusive relationship. By facing those women’s stories we wanted to  strengthen societal support for those who want to stop living with violent partner. The main tool was street performance we will play on the markets, squares, parks with audience interaction with citizens.

Traveling performance this year was performed in following cities: Belgrade, Smederevo, Velika Plana, Novi Sad, Pancevo, Novi Becej, Vlasotince, Nis, Loznica and Krusevac.
This year for the first time, performance also took place in the only female prison in city Pozarevac where 60 inmates was present as well as prison staff. This trip was especially emotional for actresses and organizers, but inmates as well since many of them recognized their own experience within performance stories.
Another very emotional trip was to the Roma Settlement called ironically “Little London”, at the outskirts of Pancevo. Event took place in the middle of settlement where only one house had electricity that could be used for performance. The women with children made the audience while men were standing at the doorsteps of the cardboard paper houses yelling at women to come back home, and calling them insulting names.
In other cities the reaction of audience were various – women shyly approach women from women's groups to report violence they suffer on daily basis and ask for the support, man usually react in negative way and condemn women and performance. But in some places, like Smederovo, local authorities welcomed the performance and the crew, and though during these meetings we could see that their support is merely declarative, it is a sign that certain changes do happen in our society related to the issue of violence of women.
In total around 1000 people saw the performance during the tour.
This year thanks to well organized PR, performance was well covered in national and local media throughout the campaign and we are currently working on establishing press clipping data base so we could efficiently plan the media strategy for the next year.
During the campaign we also made presentation of the movie from the last year's campaign that was very well accepted.
Director: Ivana Koraksić
Actresses: Biljana Stanković- Lori, Vesna Bujošević, Sasa Pokrajac, Ana Imsirevic
Sets: Marija Vidić
Script: Suncica Vucaj
Organization: Zoe Gudović
The goals of performance:
Emancipation of public on violence against women
By socially engaged performance using communications media and new technologies we are bring into public space issue on violence against women that are invisible, misrepresented or underrepresented. By using direct communication with citizens we bring issue into the social surface in order to break societal norms and taboos.

Improving quality of lives of women
Many women are coming to see our performance. In 2007 there were around 600 people who attended the performances. They are identifying with characters and sometime it is a ‘playground’ for possible change in their lives. “We do not want to be dead as women in the performance”, few women said in Sombor two years ago when they went to the police station asking for support since they live for many years in violent marriage. (We got this information after campaign has been finished by police officers that contacted us). Also, more and more women are getting information through our website in order to get more information for their life.
Professional affirmation of women artists by sharing their knowledge, skills and experience
Women’s artists, although active in alternative art scene are dealing with patriarchal concepts and lack of spaces, resources of different kind, so their possibilities to perform…Connecting them with issues of ‘ordinary’ women and dealing with…..will improve better quality of their activism as well. Giving possibility to women artists that are in some ways rooted in their methods, politics, orientations (most of them have been very active regarding non violent actions, reconciliation, anti-war campaigns…) in their professional but social life as well. We would like to create more solidarity and empower personal involvement of women’s artists in feminist politics and to strengthen its connection with issue on violence against women, but lives of women in society.

Empowerment of local women’s organizations dealing with issue on violence against women.
During the campaign we are always having a network and strong collaboration with local women organizations. Apart of promoting particular issue on battered women and children it is also possibility for those organizations to get more visibility for their local work. It is also possibility to strengthen feminist involvement and networking in these extended collaborations with local women’s organizations and initiatives, but also community and social agencies.
Community cultural development
Zene na delu are known in feminist community by those bringing emancipatory activities which are participatory, interactive and open. By bringing broad range of art tools and forms in the use in the field we create non art social change campaigns that could be understood in wider public. We are offering dynamic nature of cultural action in order to empower women and men in our society.
All activities within campaign included:
collect stories of battered women from our local women’s counseling centers on describing why it is hard for them to leave abusive relationship ( reasons that women are reporting are different: loosing custody for children, lack of economical background for autonomous life, fear of killing, because she thinks children need a father, hoping for better days to come in marriage and so on) in order to design a screenplay for traveling performance;
to write those stories in the booklet and by that to raise attention on difficulties one
woman is facing in order to leave abusive relationship although society is offering        some agencies for her support;
play traveling performances in 10 cities (fully scripted and staged, with the audience
observing);
continuous reporting on traveling performance activities in 10 cities of Serbia;
networking and collaboration with local women’s organizations involved in campaign;
media reporting;
maintaining website with information on different activities during the campaign;
video documenting of our activities during the traveling performance and creating film on I can’t leave it because… issue on violence against women; presenting film within human rights festivals, etc