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Creating a Silhouette
Silhouettes are often created by family members, friends and local service providers such as transition house staff, outreach services and police. Others in the community may want to help out or donate materials. Working in partnership can be very healing for everyone.
The role of the Silent Witness Committee is to confirm that the death of the woman was found by a court, the police or the coroner’s office to be a domestic murder or a murder-suicide (See Criteria). Once confirmed, the New Brunswick Silent Witness Committee will work with families and service providers who wish to create a silhouette and have a dedication ceremony when the silhouette joins the exhibit. Some families prefer that the silhouette join the exhibit without a ceremony. The Silent Witness Committee will prepare the first couple of sentences on the shield and send it to the family who will review it and add the personal text about their loved one (See The Women We Honour). The shields are small and bilingual so the amount of text is limited to about 220 words in each language. Once reviewed by the families, the text Silent Witness Committee will translate the text into the other official language and send the formatted text back to the family to create the shield. The shield is glued onto the chest of the completed silhouette. When there is a dedication ceremony, the Committee can also share information with families and community about best practices from previous ceremonies. Usually someone from the Committee is available to speak about the project at the ceremony.
In New Brunswick, the Committee acts as a coordinating group to oversee the travel and bookings of the silhouettes to various hosting sites across the province.