Cat is art - Irini

Δημοσιογράφος

[Alexandre Blaineau @AlBlaineau]

L’extraordinaire final du Boléro, avec la chorégraphie célèbre de Maurice Béjart
(Et le danseur Nicolas Leriche)

Une œuvre puissante, mystérieuse, obsédante.

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

Ο γάμος του Αλέκου Αλεξανδράκη με την Αλίκη Γεωργούλη – το ζευγάρι που οραματίστηκε την εμβληματική ταινία «Συνοικία το Όνειρο» https://t.co/zDGxdxvch7 μέσω @catisart

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

Théophile Steinlen, Tournée du Chat Noir. Ένα από τα πιο διάσημα παραδείγματα γραφιστικής της Belle Époque https://t.co/I7JMoZYDYx μέσω @catisart Théophile Steinlen, Tournée du Chat Noir

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

Τα πλεονεκτήματα τού να έχεις γάτα στο σπίτι https://t.co/tPjSAbXOpH μέσω @catisart

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

This image of Iryna, terrified and in tears, as she realizes what had just happened to her and understands that the next few moments will be her last, tears my soul apart.

Today, her murderer, DeCarlos Brown, was deemed “incompetent to stand trial.”

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

Théophile Steinlen, Tournée du Chat Noir. Ένα από τα πιο διάσημα παραδείγματα γραφιστικής της Belle Époque https://t.co/I7JMoZYDYx μέσω @catisart

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

«Ο Σώζων Εαυτόν Σωθήτω» του Eduardo de Filippo σε σκηνοθεσία Ταμίλλα Κουλίεβα – Πρόγραμμα καλοκαιρινής περιοδείας 2026 https://t.co/yViuRBCcnu μέσω @catisart

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

November 1971. Chiswick, West London.
Erin Pizzey is 32 years old. She is not a lawyer. Not a politician. Not a doctor.
She is a woman who talked Hounslow Council into lending her a cold, rundown building on Belmont Road — a former community hall — for almost nothing. Her original plan was modest. A warm room. A cup of tea. Somewhere for mothers with young children to simply get out of the house.
Then the door opened.
A woman stood in the entrance. She was covered, head to foot, in bruises. She was holding two small children. She was shaking.
She didn't want tea.
She needed somewhere to hide.
Erin let her in. She didn't turn her away. She didn't tell her to call the police.
Because Erin had already called the police. They told her the same thing they told every woman in Britain at the time: they could not enter a private home over a "domestic dispute." That was the law. The home was private. What happened inside it was a family matter.
When Erin contacted a female civil servant to report what she was seeing, the response was astonishing. The woman told her flatly: "There wasn't a problem of battered wives until you made one."
Erin put down the phone. Then she went back to her residents and made sure they were fed.
Within weeks, 40 mothers and children were sleeping in four tiny rooms. No funding. No staff. No legal authority.
She didn't stop.
By 1973, word had spread through quiet whisper networks — one woman telling another, "There is a place. Go to Chiswick. She won't turn you away." That same year, Erin hosted the first National Women's Aid Conference in the UK. Women from across Britain arrived, and they all recognized the same thing at once: what she had built needed to exist everywhere.
In 1974, the council set a maximum of 36 residents. At peak times, 150 women and children were living inside those walls — sleeping on floors, on chairs, in hallways. The building smelled of cooking, fear, and something else entirely: relief.
Erin was taken to court for overcrowding. She appealed all the way to the House of Lords.
She kept the doors open the entire time.
That same year, she wrote a book. Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear. It was the first published account of domestic violence in British history. It used real stories from real women inside the shelter. Overnight, a problem that had no official name was on front pages from London to New York.
The movement spread. Refuges opened across the UK. Then Australia. Then Canada. Then the United States. The pattern she created in four small rooms in West London — no blueprint, no permission, no funding — had been replicated in hundreds of shelters across the Western world.
MP Jack Ashley stood up in Parliament and said: "It was she who first identified the problem, who first recognised the seriousness of the situation and who first did something practical."
She was ranked 14th in a poll of the 100 women who shook the world. She was awarded the Italian Peace Prize. She received a CBE. The charity she founded — Chiswick Women's Aid, which became Refuge — grew into the largest domestic violence charity in the United Kingdom, with over 460 employees and an annual income of more than £33 million.
Erin Pizzey passed away on October 4, 2025, aged 86.
She never stopped.
It all began with one woman, one borrowed building, and an absolute refusal to say no.
Forty women and children showed up with nowhere to go.
She made room.

Share this if you believe one ordinary person, refusing to look away, can build a shelter that holds the whole world.

Follow us Lost in Yesterday

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

Ο Θρίαμβος του Θανάτου ή η κατάρρευση του συστήματος; https://t.co/rhj1fsLoLx μέσω @catisart

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

Πρόσκληση του Εθνικού Θεάτρου σε θεατρικούς/ές συγγραφείς για συμμετοχή σε συλλογικό έργο στην Πειραματική Σκηνή https://t.co/FGPIKqoVJT μέσω @catisart Από την πρόσκληση θα επιλεγούν δύο συγγραφείς με στόχο να συνεργαστούν και να γράψουν από κοινού ένα νέο θεατρικό κείμενο

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

Πρόσκληση του Εθνικού Θεάτρου σε θεατρικούς/ές συγγραφείς για συμμετοχή σε συλλογικό έργο στην Πειραματική Σκηνή https://t.co/FGPIKqoVJT μέσω @catisart

[sophia aram @SophiaAram]

« L’islam a 700 ans de moins que le christianisme et vit sa période inquisitoire. Est-ce que l’inquisition chrétienne est défendable ? Non. Eh bien l’islam inquisitoire ne l’est pas non plus. J’ai entendu que moi et mon Persepolis étions aussi islamophobes. Alors que j’ai vécu sous la dictature religieuse. Qu’ils ont exécuté une bonne partie de ma famille. Sans compter ceux qui étaient “juste” torturés. Quelle phobie ? Je n’aime pas l’islam politique comme n’importe quelle personne saine d’esprit. »
Marjane Satrapi, mars 2026
@le_Parisien

[Belina Penelope Doukaki @BelinakiD]

Nikos Lytras (1883 - 1927) 

The Straw Hat, ca 1925

National Gallery Athens, Greece
#art #painting

[Belina Penelope Doukaki @BelinakiD]

Greek artist Pericles Pantazis (1849-1884)

Street urchin eating watermelon, 1881

Averoff Museum, Metsovo, Epirus, Greece
#art #painting

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

Τζένη Μαστοράκη, Τα κελάρια – Les celliers https://t.co/47jcYgs2Ni μέσω @catisart

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

Τζένη Μαστοράκη, Διόδια https://t.co/qniLSQRt7N μέσω @catisart

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

Τζένη Μαστοράκη, «Περίληψη» https://t.co/97TMdwggls μέσω @catisart

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

Calderone In Situ, ένα φεστιβάλ αφιερωμένο στις site-specific παραστατικές τέχνες https://t.co/k35hDjLY8o μέσω @catisart

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

Γιάννης Κοντός, «Τι έγιναν τα παιδιά του Κάρολου Ντίκενς» https://t.co/NPLruKgh72 μέσω @catisart

[Cat is art - Irini @Catisart]

«Ο Σώζων Εαυτόν Σωθήτω» του Eduardo de Filippo σε σκηνοθεσία Ταμίλλα Κουλίεβα – Πρόγραμμα καλοκαιρινής περιοδείας 2026 https://t.co/yViuRBCcnu μέσω @catisart