Apr 11, 2009
Thank you from SWOP
The organisers of London’s first Sex Worker Open University (April 1-5 2009) would like to thank everyone who participated for making the event an enormous success. Over 200 sex workers, sex workers’ rights activists, allies and visitors from the UK and abroad took part in workshops, discussions, actions and art exhibits over five days.
On the eve of the SWOU sex workers took to the streets for a ‘Speak Out’ against the criminalisation of the sex industry at the Eros Fountain at Piccadilly Circus, co-organised with the x:talk project.
The university then held its launch event at Queen Mary, University of London, where sex workers, activists and academics made presentations and showed films about sex workers’ movements around the world, from Argentina and Costa Rica to New Zealand, Canada, Cambodia, Denmark, Germany and the UK.
From action and academia to activist art: we followed up with the opening of the photography exhibit ‘Prostitutes of Europe’, featuring black and white images of sex workers from 12 European cities by Mathilde Bouvard. The photos gracing the main hall of the London Action Resource Centre (LARC) in East London formed the backdrop for two days of skills exchange and discussion, from practical sessions (erotic dance, self defence, emotional safety) to information and debate (feminist anti-prostitution arguments, anonymity, sex worker outreach projects).
The event closed with a plenary on ‘where to go now’ and a party with sex worker performances at Ramparts Social Centre.
The SWOU was featured in The Evening Standard, The Independent, The Guardian and London Lite. Press coverage of sex workers coming together to share experiences and skills and make noise and politics offered a welcome alternative to the normally negative, stereotypical and sensationalist media representations of the sex industry.
A special thank you to all those who ran workshops and made presentations, organised, set up and cleaned the venues, baked cakes, cooked food and ran the bar, DJ’d and performed, travelled from far and wide to join us, and otherwise helped to make this amazing event happen.
The enthusiasm and solidarity generated by the weekend will now carry us forward to new projects: a sex worker magazine, a social networking site (www.swarm-up.org) and a sex worker film festival in London in autumn 2009.