School of Communication

I want to be Amelie.

Chop my hair off and put on a French accent howdy do-da.

That's all there is to it. Maybe I could take it one step further - I could move to France.

I would meet a handsome young man and he would look at me and explain his shock at seeing my beauty.

So cute! I would meet him under the Eiffel Tower that afternoon.

I would drink everyone in, swallowing their hearts until they tell me their truths then spit them out more moist than they will be.

And I would be Amelie!

Music and sound design by Shauna Doyle.

Everybody tells you all the time that you can’t, or you shouldn’t, or you should have a guy with you, or you should make sure you’re in a group, and in order for your safety or something’s gonna happen to you.

And when you actually get out there and you realise that you don’t need you know, some guy sitting next to you, like holding your hand basically the whole time, like you don’t need that, you don’t even need other people to keep you safe, you can do it on your own, it gives you that sense of independence, that yeah, you can do this.

Travelling alone is what a lot of women want to do.

But feel unsure about their safety whilst being alone.

Solo trips are empowering and as women, we all want one thing.

And that’s equality, in all aspects of life, including travelling.

So this is what I ask you.

When a woman you know tells you she wishes to leap out into the world, encourage and reassure her.

You were the one who told me what that word meant. A cabinet of curiosities, a wonder room of natural and unnatural history. Inside I met a loris with a toothache who helped me unpin the butterflies from their display. They flooded between the tree trunk ghosts of a rain forest and dragged their feet across the frozen nectar of ashen floristry. I told him of your crooked lateral incisors and of the way my chest feels when I think of you too much. I do not know who they are the scientists, the ethnographers, the map makers. But here we tip out a landscape of their spoils. The butterflies flutter against water, against glass.