Safer Spaces Policy

LaDIYfest Sheffield events are run on the insistence that all attendees will be respectful and thoughtful to all other attendees, participants and organisers. This means no individual should be made to feel uncomfortable or oppressed by any other individual’s opinions or actions. If a discussion becomes personal, we trust that participants will keep what is said inside the room and behave with kindness and consideration when responding.

We request that everyone allows space for other individuals to contribute. This means that all participants should be considerate of how much they are speaking to avoid dominating the conversation, and never interrupt other people who are sharing their views. We also encourage participants to listen to views which are different from their own, but feel confident in expressing opposition in a non-confrontational way. We are here to learn from each other.

Harassment, hostility and aggression will not be tolerated in any form and if we feel that you have overstepped these boundaries we will challenge this and you may be asked to leave. If anyone experiences discomfort or concern about something that happens at one of our events we encourage you to make one of the organisers aware in whatever way you feel able. We will take any report of such behaviour or language very seriously and you will have our support. This policy also extends to all online resources (Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Google email and mailing list, etc) attached to LaDIYfest Sheffield.

We hope that during LaDIYfest events we can be as inclusive as possible. However, we will always prioritise those who have suffered from discrimination or oppression due to their identity, background, age or (dis)ability. We recognise that people may have had negative or harmful experiences of other peoples’ behaviour; therefore if you have concerns about a specific person attending an event or feel uncomfortable with them being there due to harmful behaviours in the past, let one of the organisers know and we will ask them to leave. We will also endeavour to ensure that organisations advocating political positions or policies that we believe to be actively harmful or oppressive will not be asked to participate in LaDIYfest events.

We hope people of all genders, abilities, ages, ethnicities and sexualities will feel welcome to participate in our meetings and events, therefore any form of discriminatory language or behaviour is not acceptable.

4 Responses to Safer Spaces Policy

  1. More than that, that those who wish to assault those of similar assumed gender are given a platform. This is venue for sexual assault.

  2. I suppose that is for us, as enforcers of the policy, to decide what is a valid opinion, in line with our ethos and politics. Do you have any suggestions on how to alter/improve the policy?

  3. One issue with this policy is that it is open to abuse by those two wish to deny a platform to a person with a perfectly valid opinion.

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