Online Public Education Series
Lady of the Night School (part two)

Lady of the Night School is a public education course exploring the different histories of sex worker movements. Each month we collectively explore a new topic, looking less at contemporary legislation or campaigns, and more at how we got where we are today.

This course is open to both sex workers and allies. We explicitly encourage non-sex workers to sign up as your contributions help us fund projects specific to sex workers. There is no requirement to have attended Part One in order to attend Part Two.

Part Two of Lady of the Night School is a 3 month course running from April – June 2022. Each month will cover a different topic through:

– Public talks by speakers knowledgeable in the subjects.
– Discussion groups where you can collectively dig deep into the topics.
– Reading materials that connect to the issues explored, we try to offer these at all different reading levels.
– Usually video and audio materials to expand your understanding of the topic in different mediums.
– Plus a little bit of homework in the mix.

This course has a limited number of places. Please register early so that you don’t miss out. Sessions will typically run on Monday evenings at one week intervals, except for the second lecture which will be on Tuesday 3rd of May.

The topics and schedule for Part Two are:

Sex Workers Built the Internet (April)

It’s time to have “The Talk” with technologists. From Call Girls to Cam Girls, sex workers have been some of the greatest innovators on the possibilities of harnessing technology. But we currently live in a present in which technology is explicitly built to target and eliminate sex work. In other words, to Big Tech the sex worker is as indispensable as they are disposable. This lecture will outline this tradition of innovation-to-elimination, while also exploring how we might code sex worker ethics into future design.

Lecture by Gabriella Garcia, hosted by Nim Ralph
Monday April 4th, 7pm – 8.30pm

Seminar by Debs Durojaiye
Monday 11th April, 6.30 – 8.30pm

Gabriella Garcia (she/her) is the co-founder of Decoding Stigma, a cross-institutional working group that calls for the inclusion of sex worker voices in all spaces that purport to be designing the future. She recently completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program (ITP), where her research focused on the co-history of commercial sex and media technology. She sits on the Community Advisory Board for Urban Justice Center’s Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP).

Debs Durojaiye (she/her) is a designer and community technologist working in the areas of digital inclusion, accessibility, participation and common ownership. She is co-director of Multitudes, a design and technology co-op and a member of the W3C Devrel Council, an initiative to increase participation from excluded communities in web standards. She co-founded Afrotech Fest in 2018, a ‘for us by us’ tech festival in the UK, for Black people of African and Caribbean heritage

Nim Ralph (they/them) is a trans writer, educator and activist. Nim has led campaigns for trans & queer rights, environmental justice and anti-racism in the UK, and works with activists globally. They are the Lead Trainer and designer of multiple activist training programmes. You can follow them on twitter: @NMRLPH

Anti Trafficking in the Caribbean (May)

For many decades in the Caribbean, particular migrant women have been constructed as exotic, erotic subjects, yet are deemed to be either victims of human trafficking networks or “loose” women. This talk takes a closer look at these trends as reflected in public discourses, policies and laws through a consideration of the treatment of migrant women in the region, especially from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, and of the challenges they pose to anti-trafficking discourses.

Lecture by Kamala Kempadoo
Tuesday May 3rd, 7pm – 8.30pm

Seminar by Emily Kenway
Monday May 9th 6.30pm – 8.30pm

Kamala Kempadoo is Professor in the Department of Social Science at York University, Canada, with appointments in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies, Political Science, Social and Political Thought, and Development Studies. She teaches Black Radical and Black Feminist Thought, Sex Work Studies, Critical Antitrafficking Studies, and Caribbean Studies, and has published extensively and speaks internationally on the Caribbean sex trade and global anti-trafficking discourses. She is currently completing an edited book with Elena Shih, on white supremacy, coloniality and anti-trafficking (forthcoming from Routledge, 2022).

Emily Kenway is a writer, activist and former policy adviser. Her first book, ‘The Truth about Modern Slavery’, has been acclaimed in the Guardian and elsewhere. Her writing has been published by The Guardian, The Independent, Huffington Post, Times Literary Supplement and more. As a speaker, Emily has appeared on most major news channels. She is currently working on her second book, ‘Who Cares’ (working title, Hachette 2023). As of September 2021, she is also a scholar of political science at Edinburgh University.

Sex Worker Art and Creative Practices (June)

Take a tour of sex worker art and activism worldwide and learn about the role creativity has played in our struggles for change.

Lecture by Yves Sanglante, hosted by Tamara-Jade Kaz
Monday June 6th 7pm – 8.30pm.

Seminar hosted by Tamara-Jade Kaz
Monday June 13th 6.30pm – 8.30pm

Yves Sanglante (they/them) is an artist, performer and curator interested in art as a means to inspire liberation. Through their work, they explore overlooked and forgotten stories from queer, trans, and sex worker communities to understand the present, and inform visions of the future. In 2016, as part of a collective of sex workers, artists and anthropologists, Sanglante co-founded sex worker-led archive ‘Objects of Desire’. They also co-curated the Decriminalised Futures exhibition which is currently showing at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. You can follow their work at ‘Nostalgia Nausea’.

Tamara-Jade Kaz is an artist, activist and educator based in east London. Her art practice explores themes of marginalised identity, social justice and community, primarily through illustration. She has seven years of experience as a trainer and facilitator for social change groups. she specialises in developing bespoke programmes and workshops that challenge groups to reflect on strategy, structural power, group culture and relationships.She combines her passion for facilitation and visual art through her practice as a visual notetaker. Tamara-Jade’s background also includes working in and organising around gendered violence prevention from a Black feminist perspective. An intersectional analysis of these issues is particularly important to her as a Black lesbian. In 2019, Tamara-Jade was appointed to the good night out campaign board of directors; a CIC that works with nightlife spaces and organisations to better understand, respond to, and prevent sexual harassment and assault. She is a member of the designers and cultural workers branch of United Voices of the World trade union, and the association of illustrators.

Participants in the Night School are expected to attend live lectures and to participate in seminar sessions across all 3 months of the course. We encourage everyone who signs up to do the readings and to take on the small homework tasks assigned to get the most out of the course. We will make recordings of lectures and reading materials available for attendees should you not be able to attend a session. Nothing is compulsory – just encouraged!

All lectures will be live captioned in English and auto-captioning will be available for seminars. Live language translation for lectures is available in English and Spanish. Reading materials will typically be in English and seminars will be conducted in English. If you need language translation other than English or Spanish, or need translation during seminars, please indicate this on the registration form. We aim to create a learning space that is responsive to participant’s needs. If you would like to talk through your options further, please do get in touch with our Coordinator, Jess, at events@decriminalisedfutures.org.

The cost for the 3 month course is sliding scale £60 – £180 sliding scale, with four different levels. Regardless of how much you pay, you’ll still be able to access all the materials and attend all events.

You can choose how much you want to pay but we would encourage people with institutional access or in full time employment to pay at the higher end.

If you’re interested in the course but don’t have Mondays free over the next few months, sign up here to be notified when lectures are made public. You can also sign up to find out when future Lady Of The Night School lectures are announced before anyone else.

If you are a sex worker who cannot afford this please get in touch by emailing events@decriminalisedfutures.org and we can offer you a free place.

For more information about Part 1 of this course click here

This course is made possible with generous support from the Barry Amiel & Norman Melburn Trust and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.