On the 25th of December, Fairspace unveiled its first exhibition “Not My Fault” addressing victim-blaming and narratives around sexual violence. The expo was hosted at WORM Rotterdam, a multi-media alternative arts & culture venue – a space that values safety, inclusion, and aims, in their own words, to: “…kick harassment to the curb!”
The last quote comes from the venue’s own Ask for Angela campaign, a nightlife initiative originally born in the UK in 2016 and since adopted globally. It creates support for people in unsafe situations by allowing them to discreetly receive assistance from bar staff by asking for “Angela.” We at Fairspace were curious to learn more about the rollout of this campaign, and sat down with researcher and designer Lara de Moor (she/they), one of the people behind its implementation, who investigated social safety in nightlife during their time at WORM.
Q: How are you affiliated with the topic of unwanted behaviour and harassment in your personal or professional life?
Lara: I still work on projects surrounding social safety. It’s a topic I’m passionate about but one that also really frustrates me at the same time. I had been working at WORM for two years as floor manager when I started my research, and I noticed my colleagues and I were constantly having our boundaries crossed, verbally and physically. I thought: “Damn, is this the norm we have to work with?” And a lot of people told us: “Yeah, that’s just part of nightlife; this is how it is.” That really frustrated me, and that’s when I thought we have to get to the bottom of this.
What was painful, while working on the research, is quickly realising how much unwanted behaviour is normalised. As a young person, I was harassed in the club and didn’t even know it was harassment. That’s where all this pain and frustration was coming from.
After graduating and completing my research for the campaign, I became a teacher at HKU and now I teach students how to research, develop, and implement social safety in public life, from the club to the office. I hope social safety becomes so normalised that, in a way, my job won’t exist anymore. There is definitely a transition period going on in regard to unwanted behaviour and harassment. There’s a ball rolling, but it needs a lot of kicking and I’m here to kick it.
Q: How did conceptualisation of the Ask for Angela campaign at WORM start, and what did its implementation look like?
Lara: At the time, a lot of wheels were turning around the topic of unwanted behaviour. We looked into the Ask for Angela campaign from the UK, and learned a lot from prior case studies of clubs in London – what works and doesn’t work – so we could implement it as effectively as possible at WORM. We thought it was important to have a familiar campaign instead of something completely new, a sort of universal sign people recognised from elsewhere but then adapted to WORM’ style so that our visitors would connect with it. We made informative posters explaining the campaign and presented our house rules boiled down to five main points, and we also created stickers and coasters stating “Touch the beer, not me.”
When it came to internal implementation, we even received a training from Fairspace on how to deal with unwanted behaviour and harassment. We had meetings and made sure everyone (including our security staff) was informed, knew what to do in such instances, and how to deal with it. We made sure there were trained team members behind the bar who knew step-by-step, what to do if someone approached them asking for Angela.
We also sent the campaign plans to the entire WORM team way before it launched publicly so we could gather everyone’s feedback. After all, we could create something based on our research but everyone at WORM had to be able to work with it. I think this was a vital part to the campaign’s implementation – putting it out there for the whole WORM community to collaborate on. I’m glad it didn’t remain a vague idea inside our walls; people needed to see it, to know it, and it should become second nature for venues like this. I think a solid foundation has been laid for sure, and I really appreciate how much freedom and support we were given by the team at WORM to do this.
Q: What has the response to the campaign been like? How did it feel to see it realised?
Lara: Well, I don’t work behind the bar anymore, but I sometimes still get feedback from old colleagues that they receive many compliments from visitors about the campaign. People recognise it from other bars, venues, or from social media, so I think it’s really good we chose this kind of international call as it’s instantly recognisable for many. It aligns very well with what sort of space WORM wants to be, and it fits visually too. It makes me happy to see photos of our campaign – like the coasters or stickers – being posted online by visitors, and to see that this sort of movement is also growing out of the cultural and nightlife scenes and reaching other public spaces or institutions.
The campaign seems to have really settled into the mission and vision of what WORM is and will be in the future. It’s great to see how initiatives against unwanted behaviour and harassment are being picked up and taken seriously. When people visit, see the campaign and go: “Oh, wow they also have this here!”, you feel sort of recognised and affirmed that this was needed. The atmosphere here does feel safer, with the emphasis on safer, because a space can never fully be safe of course, yet the team at WORM keeps social safety in mind, and you see it not only in their programming but also the people working there and their values and ideas.
I hope these sort of initiatives spark other people’s fire to keep addressing unwanted behaviour and harassment, because it’s still needed. So, let’s keep making exhibitions about this, let’s keep the conversation going because at some point it will become so normalised that we can’t imagine a world without social safety. Let’s keep that ball rolling.
You can read more about WORM’s Ask for Angela campaign here. Are you interested in receiving a training by Fairspace about how to prevent and address harassment? Have a look at our training offer. We’d be happy to help you!
Linkedin: Lara de Moor
Instagram: Lara de Moor
