Using technologies to commemorate International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers in the North East of England

This article explores the use of digital technologies at the commemoration of International Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers in the North East of England in 2016 and 2017. Learning from sex work research and Human-Computer Interaction literatures, this feminist exploration of the day provides opportunities for more nuanced and contextualised discussions of digital technologies that are used with, and for sex workers and sex work support services. In the paper, I provide an overview of how this day is commemorated internationally before providing a detailed overview of a hyper-localised day organised by Changing Lives, a charity supporting sex workers, people who have experienced sexual exploitation, and those engaged in survival sex. I focus on the ways in which they use digital technologies throughout an activist march and a reflexive commemoration event to better understand the ways in which novel digital technologies could be designed and implemented for these kinds of commemorations in the future

The Partnership Quilt: An Interactive Living Archive of Sex Worker Voices

Working alongside people who use and manage a local charity and professional quilters, we sewed a quilted blanket which we augmented with capacitive touch sensors to turn the craft Piece into an interactive archiver. In this way, the quilt tells the story of the women who were involved in making it not only through the seams, but also with our embedded voices. We describe the process of quilting a digitally augmented social fabric and the ways in which the sewing allowed us to learn through the seams, we present a project that brings together aspects of human connection, crafted learning, and living archival practice

Where is the transparency of the new ACM violations database?

The Interactions website (interactions.acm.org) hosts a stable of bloggers who share insights and observations on HCI, often challenging current practices. Each issue we'll publish selected posts from some of the leading and emerging voices in the field

The Red Umbrella March: Crafting a Living Activist Archive

December 17th marks the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Historically, on this day sex workers carry red umbrellas and march through the streets of large cities to fight for their rights, reduce stigma, and to make their presence visible in a city. In 2016 Changing Lives organised the first of these marches in Newcastle upon Tyne. We joined sex workers, support workers, police, and other supporters on this march as well as the remembrance service that took place afterwards. Through ethno-mimesis, we recorded our experiences of the march and subsequent service, focusing on the use of digital technologies. Between the march and the service, we also encouraged attendants to partake in our ‘red umbrellas’ activity. Here we used the open source JigsAudio tool to begin to craft a living activist archive of Newcastle’s experiences on the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. With this activity, we have supported Changing Lives service delivery, while simultaneously developing a digital archive of sex worker voices. To our knowledge, this is the first time that experiences of those marching to end violence against sex workers are archived in this format. We archive the voices in a hybrid craft where playful crafting is mixed with tangible technologies to develop a space where the archive is manifested not only through the digital audio recording of voices, but also through the tangible crafted artefact

The Partnership Quilt: Project Report

The Partnership Quilt is a collaboration between Changing Lives, Six Penny Memories, and Open Lab at Newcastle University. It started out as an activity for clients of the Girls and Proud project in Changing Lives to do during the Northumberland drop-in sessions organised by Kirsty, but quickly turned into something bigger – clients began sewing at home, while waiting for appointments, or even in the bath! As Kim and Debbie from Six Penny Memories became involved in the project the individual pieces came together and were shaped into a well-balanced quilt. While this quilt by itself is something all those who put a stitch in it can be proud of, the addition of the secondary quilt is what makes this a truly special project. Angelika and Janis from Open Lab used do-it-yourself, flexible, and low-cost technologies to turn the soft and colourful quilt into a living archive of stories and experiences of Changing Lives service delivery in the North East of England. The addition of quilted capacitive touch sensors turns this traditional craft artefact into a contemporary piece of interactive art: by touching some of the rosettes on the quilt a voice is activated to tell a part of the story that lies in the folds and seams of the quilt. The materials we used allow us not only to continue to share the story of the quilt, but they allow Changing Lives staff to curate the audio recordings and easily exchange the voices that are shared through the quilt. Like this, it can be used for exhibitions, staff training, or focused one-on-one reflection

Technologies and Social Justice Outcomes in Sex Work Charities: Fighting Stigma, Saving Lives

Sex workers' rights are human rights, and as such are an issue inherently based in social, criminal, and political justice debates. As HCI continues to move towards feminist and social justice oriented research and design approaches, we argue that we need to take into consideration the difficulties faced by sex workers; and explore how technology can and does mediate social justice outcomes for them. We contribute directly to this challenge by providing an empirical account of a charity whose work is built on the underlying move towards social and criminal justice for sex workers in the UK. Through ethnographic fieldwork, meetings, interviews, surveys, and creative workshops we describe the different points of view associated with the charity from a variety of stakeholders. We discuss their service provision and the ways in which HCI is uniquely positioned to be able respond to the needs of and to support sex work support services

Networks of Care: Tech Abuse Advocates’ Digital Security Practices

As technology becomes an enabler of relationship abuse and coercive control, advocates who support survivors develop digital security practices to counter this. Existing research on technology-related abuse has primarily focused on describing the dynamics of abuse and developing solutions for this problem; we extend this literature by focusing on the security practices of advocates working "on the ground", i.e. in domestic violence shelters and other support services. We present findings from 26 semi-structured interviews and a data walkthrough workshop in which advocates described how they support survivors. We identified a variety of intertwined emotional and technical support practices, including establishing trust, safety planning, empowerment, demystification, supporting evidence collection and making referrals. By building relationships with other services and stakeholders, advocates also develop networks of care throughout society to create more supportive environments for survivors. Using critical and feminist theories, we see advocates as sources of crucial technical expertise to reduce this kind of violence in the future. Security and privacy researchers can build on and develop these networks of care by employing participatory methods and expanding threat modelling to account for interpersonal harms like coercive control and structural forms of discrimination such as misogyny and racism