Consent Culture is delighted to announce that Manchester UK will be hosting the third Safe/Ward event!

Like the previous workshops, created by Kitty Stryker and Maggie Mayhem, Safe/Ward Manchester will be a free, public workshop for community members and leaders who are looking to understand and address sexual, physical, and emotional abuse within their communities.

We plan to help create a safe space to talk about what it is that we do, and we’ll be brainstorming, chatting and figuring out how to make the Manchester scene even better. We think our city does social events really well, but as a scene, it’s a bit short on teaching, sharing knowledge and self-improvement. Safe/Ward is here to help fix that, and we’re actively taking a stand against abusive behaviours through this workshop. Some of the things we’ll be discussing include:

• what does community mean, and how does that confer responsibility?
• negotiation and consent
• telling someone vs telling on someone
• how to recognize abuse
• the subtlety of abuse
• the importance of training hosts about handling abuse
• creating safe space to speak up
• how to confront an accused abuser
• acknowledging positive behaviors
• where the law stands
• providing support and education, with a focus on “don’t abuse”, not “don’t get abused”
• resources to have in playspaces

We’re currently sourcing prizes for an awesome sex-positive fundraising raffle, and have negotiated donations from the likes of Cleis Press and Geof the Fetishman already!

The venue has supplied their space to us for free – so we hope you’ll take advantage of their great food and drink menu to say thank you. The bar is just a five minute walk from Piccadilly train and bus stations, so there’s great public transport links – and a local car park if you need to drive into the city. The space is unfortunately not wheelchair accessible, though.

Here’s the event on FetLife, and on Facebook – and we’ll have flyers for downloading and printing soon. We look forward to seeing you there!